Fangs for the Memories
by The Real Muse
Summary: Peter thinks he's taken over by a vampire. He's wrong. It's not a vampire; it's worse. Continued on my home website
1. Default Chapter

FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES  
  
By: CindyR  
  
Water dripped down the rough hewn walls, joining the shallow stream that ran just below boot level. No sunlight penetrated this far beneath the earth; from tunnel to tunnel there existed only the inky curtains of eternal night. Dark it was but not silent. The world was alive with sound, from soft squeaks to furtive scurrying as the inhabitants of the underground bustled about in their daily hunt for food. It may be imagined that it caused no little stir when five invaded this enclosed realm, shattering the gloom with light.  
  
"Sewer. Again. Sewer. I hate it down here!"  
  
Though the words were grumbled softly they elicited groans from all around. The single-file procession stopped in its tracks and turned in the direction of the speaker, illuminating him from two directions. A miner's hardhat bobbed atop one, wide blond curl as the leader placed both hands on his hips. "You've been saying that for almost an hour, Peter. Redundancy will not shorten our assignment by a single millisecond."  
  
Peter Venkman, the grumbler, also came to a halt. He shoved a rifle-shaped particle thrower under one elbow, then tipped his own hardhat up off his forehead. This, unfortunately, served the dual task of revealing the low ceiling and disturbing the solid sheath of cockroaches that clung to the slimy stone. Peter shuddered and hurriedly looked away. "I don't care. I didn't want to take this lousy job anyway." He broke off, nostrils flaring. "I was wrong -- this place smells even worse than a catbox."  
  
"Yucky. Yucky." A faintly glowing green blob also wearing a hardhat-plus- light floated nearer, nervously checking over its right shoulder before slinging a skinny arm around Peter's neck. "Place yucky. Scary. Slimer not like it here."  
  
Peter dislodged the arm and wiped away a spot of green slime left behind. "Couldn't agree more, Spud. Not that I want to offend Dr. Spengler by griping."  
  
Egon's blue eyes glittered with annoyance. "Like it or not, Peter, we're here and we've got a job to do." He brandished a jewelry-box sized object that was quietly beeping to itself; its fascia glowed red in the gloom. "According to the PKE meter, we're in an area of high psycho-kinetic energy. All indications so far read as a Class 7 or better, but with the walls blocking my equipment, I'm unable to tell precisely what spectral subdivision we're dealing with."  
  
"That lady from the Sewer Authority seemed to know what type," a rich baritone voice interrupted from Venkman's right. The speaker was almost a shadow himself, dark skin making his face nearly invisible behind the glare of the lamps. Winston Zeddemore imitated Slimer's action of peering over his shoulder, examining walls, ceiling and ground with equal precision, his own weapon gripped securely in both hands. "According to her, what we're tracking down here is a ... vampire."  
  
"I don't like vampires," Venkman complained, swiping sweaty dark hair out of his eyes. "Nasty things. Can't trust them. Remember '86? Lupusville? Our throwers barely knocked them down and we couldn't trap them at all."  
  
"Count Vostok wasn't so bad," Zeddemore remarked fairly. "He seemed to be a pretty decent guy once we got to know him."  
  
Spengler racked his thrower, using his now-free hand to adjust two dials on the meter. "Though I was unable to perform the experiments on Count Vostok that I would have liked, the readings I took from both him and the inhabitants of Lupusville, vampire and werewolf, seemed to indicate that none of them were true vampires -- at least not in the sense that Count Glutenborgen was. The others actually registered closer to the traditional Class 6 metamorphs we've faced in the past, possibly one a subspecies to the next. My theory is that Vostok and the others were simple shape- shifters who had somehow become locked into one or two options."  
  
"Count Glutenborgen scarrrry!" Slimer announced, perching on Venkman's shoulder like a giant pigeon. "Didn't like him."  
  
"He sure liked you, Spud. Too much." Winston scratched under his helmet, removing a beetle that had crawled up his collar and lodged in his short, curly hair. He grimaced and flicked it away. "Vostok did say he was the last of his kind even though there were a whole slew of vampires in Lupusville. Maybe he was talking about the last of his subspecies?"  
  
Egon stroked his square jaw, eyes distracted behind his lenses. "If I could only have hooked him up to the plasmic electrometer for a few minutes...."  
  
"You may get another chance," Peter grumbled, wiping his face on his sleeve. The humidity was high with so much water around though this far underground the temperature was cool. "If that lady was right, we may be facing a whole new set. Hope this doesn't mean some of those guys from Lupusville got loose. They were tough."  
  
"What Mrs. Orsini said," the blond put in before Peter could launch an entirely new line of complaint, "is that two of her workers were attacked down her and bitten. We've met many nether-entities with teeth and claws who most assuredly did not qualify under nomenclature including the term vampire."  
  
"That one guy got chomped right in the neck," Peter shot back, again swatting Slimer away. "That doesn't make you just a liiiiiitle bit suspicious?"  
  
A fourth figure had been standing several yards farther down the tunnel waiting impatiently for the conversation to end. But now he stepped into the illuminated circle of the others and slapped Venkman on the arm. He was slightly shorter than the other three, with a smudged, youthful face made distinctive by large brown eyes and an infectuous smile. "Come on, guys! This place is neat! It's history! Do you know how old some of these tunnels are?" He turned and patted the nearest wall then jumped back with a cry of disgust when a six-inch waterbug strolled casually across his thumb. His smile, however, returned immediately. "This section alone could be a hundred years old! Thousands if we've accessed some of the natural caverns criss-crossing Manhattan! A lot of people even go spelunking down here!"  
  
Visibly unimpressed, Venkman folded his arms across his chest, keeping his own distance from the pest-infested walls. "Oh, joy. Does that mean this is high-class sewage?"  
  
"Yuck," Slimer repeated, as thrilled as was Venkman. Something outside the ring of lights caught his eye and he floated off, returning seconds later holding a squawling, wiggling brown shape in both hands. Happily he floated from one man to the next, thrusting it into each man's face, cooing, "Ohhhh, look! Mousey! Preeeeety mousey."  
  
Cries of "Rat!" "Yeow!" and, "I HATE rats!" echoed through the narrow chamber during the general outrush. Peter retreated several yards and stopped, an expression of utmost disgust on his handsome face. "Slimer," he began in a calm voice, "Mousey doesn't like being held. Why don't you put Mousey down and let him go play with his mousey friends. Not there!" he added when Slimer made to comply next to his left foot. "Mousey's friends are down the tunnel ... waaaaaay down the tunnel."  
  
"Okay!" Crooning pleasantly to his charge, the green ghost floated into the unlit portion of the tunnel and vanished.  
  
"Nasty things," Winston shuddered, wiping his palms on his jumpsuit. "Never could stand rats."  
  
"Most unsanitary." Egon adjusted his glasses and peered around, his white 'halo' describing a half-circle. "We'll probably all need booster shots to avoid infection." He again consulted his PKE meter, turning it in all directions. "Still nothing. We shall have to continue our random patrol."  
  
"Watch out for bats!" Ray teased, a mischievous grin lighting his dirty face.  
  
"I'm more worried about rabid cockroaches," Peter volleyed, giving the engineer a friendly shove. "You don't really think there are vampires down here, do you?"  
  
Ray's chorus of, "But wouldn't that be neat?!" was interrupted when Winston gave him a silencing poke. Assaulted from two directions, the engineer protected his middle with crossed arms and stepped back out of range.  
  
"I've got a question," the black Ghostbuster went on in a serious vein. "We're pretty confined down here; that means any attacks are going to be fought in close quarters. There's a chance we're gonna get tapped."  
  
"You mean bitten?" Peter questioned, sobering.  
  
Zeddemore nodded. "Remember what happened in Lupusville? Werewolves turning into vampires, and vampires into werewolves, and all because they were bitten." He fingered his collar nervously, then pulled the zipper up as high as it would go. "Frankly, brothers, I don't want to spend the rest of my days enjoying the nightlife." Both he and Peter fixed Egon with an inquiring look.  
  
The physicist cleared his throat. "I would estimate the probability of that happening to be minuscule," he began in tones that declared himself none too sure on the subject. "The plasmic energy in such situations is believed to propagate unchecked upon the death of the host, imbuing some semblance of life to the body and maneuvering it through previously set patterns. Thus, the legends of bodies temporarily animated upon death."  
  
"He means it's a lot like a disease," Ray translated, instinctively rejoining the circle. "Even if you're bitten, you can fight off the effects because ... well, you're still alive. But if you die thanks to the bite, your body is forced to mimic the patterns in the injected plasmic energy."  
  
Peter jerked his thumb in the younger man's direction, addressing Winston. "Wasn't he supposed to make like baby words so we could understand this?"  
  
Zeddemore nodded solemnly. "I think the boy's been hanging around Egon too long." He tapped his own temple. "Addles the brain."  
  
"There is, of course, very little recent information on the phenomenon," Egon went on, ignoring both the interruption and Ray's protest. "The closest we've come to modern day effects is what happened in Lupusville."  
  
Boyish enthusiasm lit Ray's face. He cocked his head, exchanging an interested look with Spengler. "Wow! If we go back we can take some readings off the transformed werewolves and vampires! Maybe one of them would even let us run some tests!"  
  
Spengler was no less excited by the possibility. "Perhaps a return trip to Lupusville...."  
  
Alarmed, Peter nipped that conversation in the bud. He kicked impatiently at the dirty water with one boot, liberally dousing both Spengler and Stantz. "Let's get going, bunkies. I don't want to spend the rest of my life down here."  
  
"You got something better to do?" Winston taunted, following Egon into unexplored reaches.  
  
"They're paying us double for this job," Ray added by way of encouragement.  
  
Peter, bringing up the rear, danced backward, shaking his head pityingly when Stantz tripped over a submerged bit of flotsam. "I don't care if they are paying us quadruple," he groused, helping the younger man up with a hand under his elbow, "I do not want to miss my date with Sandra tonight."  
  
"I'm pleased to see you've set your priorities to so professional an apex," Egon said dryly, absently brushing a corpse white centipede off his pantsleg. He moved a little ahead of the others, sloshing through the ankle deep waters of the old sewer tunnel with every evidence of distaste. "I had expected more, considering the fact that we need that $10,000 the mayor is willing to pay us for eliminating this particular N-E."  
  
"Who's Sandra?" Ray asked, brushing himself down. "I thought you were seeing that operator lady...." He turned back to lay a sympathetic if dripping hand on Peter's shoulder. "It didn't work out? Gosh, Pete, I'm sorry. I hope it wasn't because of my boat or anything."  
  
"Keeshar," Slimer quoted unexpectedly, clinging to Ray's neck. "Him bad dude."  
  
Peter rolled his eyes drolly in the younger man's direction. "Ray, Sandra is Operator 23. The woman has a name, you know."  
  
Ray shrugged and dropped his hand, resuming his place in line. "I didn't know you'd actually hooked up with her."  
  
That won a moment's silence. "Welllll, we haven't actually 'connected' yet if that's what you mean. She wasn't able to get time off her job until tonight." He beamed invisibly to the others. "Tonight's the night! I finally get to meet Sandra face-to-face! She's already told me all about herself. Did you know Sandra used to be Miss Wiener Tot?...."  
  
*** 


	2. Chapter 2

"... all because she guessed how many snouts go into a Wienie Tot!" Peter finished dreamily, pausing at a juncture of three tunnels. "That shows she's as smart as she is.... Which way, Egon?" He waited, tapping his foot impatiently, then glanced over his shoulder when there was no immediate reply. It wasn't until then he realized he was quite alone. He turned in a circle, shining his lantern in all directions. "Egon? Ray? Winston?" Still nothing. "Slimer?" Peter scratched his head, thinking furiously. "Let's see, we were together when Ray fell into that sink hole ... then Winston got that leech in his shorts...." He scratched his head again, dislodging a multi-legged wriggler. Shuddering, he brushed it off his shoulder and took a step to the right, more interested in his current whereabouts than the insect. "Darn. That'll teach me to daydream on company time. I wonder when I lost them."  
  
He cocked his head, listening intently. This far under the streets, there was very little to be heard by way of civilization. A low rumble heralded the passage of a train to his left, then it too was gone. Furtive movements from the floor and walls notified him that he was not completely alone much though he would have preferred it to the company of insects and rodents. Listen as he might, however, he could make out no sound from his friends. With a curse, Peter moved to the exact center of the tunnel intersection and flashed his miners lantern down each branch. Miles of waste-filled pipeline stretched to each compass point, dark, aromatic and depressing.  
  
"Which way did I come from?" he asked himself, more than a bit turned around. "These things all look alike." Something squished unpleasantly under Peter's left boot; with a grimace he pulled it free and shook it off. "I hate sewers," he griped through gritted teeth. "I hate cockroaches and I HATE THIS JOB!" This last was given considerable volume; unfortunately, there was no one in the immediate vicinity to hear. All thoughts of Sandra fading rapidly into obscurity, Peter pulled out his pocket transceiver and thumbed it on. "Ray? This is Peter." Instead of Stantz' cheerful tones, the radio produced only rough static. Peter whacked it with his palm and tried again. "Ray, answer me." Still nothing. Peter sighed and rehooked the instrument to his belt. "The walls must be muffling the transmission," he told himself unnecessarily, feeling something damp on his pantsleg. He glanced down to where the rising water was beginning to soak the tops of his boots. "I must have dropped a level without noticing. Better start looking for a way out."  
  
He examined the three tunnels one by one, paying particular attention to a muffled squeaking from the northern-most one. "I should have never let Egon lead off; I knew he was out to get me after I told Janine about his date with Wynona." He clenched his fists, scowling ferociously at a braver- than-normal rat that was staring at him from a tiny crack in the ceiling; the rat took the hint and vanished. "If this is Egon's idea of a joke," he finished, choosing a direction more or less at random and starting off, "I'll have his butt for a blue plate special ... and I might anyway. This is all his fault."  
  
Cheered by the prospect of revenge for his woes, Peter tromped on, the blackness unrelenting except for the light from his helmet. "First ladder I see, I'm out'a of here," he promised himself, wandering curiously towards an unrecognizable mass covering one wall. The mass squirmed wetly in response to his approach and Peter made a hasty detour along the tunnel's far side. "Ulp! Sooner the better, too. Hope I don't run into that ..." He trailed off, a new thought erasing his scowl and replacing it with a nervous frown. "... vampire?"  
  
Reminded, he turned again, shining his light back the way he'd come. "If I run into that thing while I'm by myself...." He didn't finish the thought aloud but his mind perversely filled in the blanks in graphic detail. Facing a Class 7 was bad enough with the team; without them it was sure suicide. One proton pack would not easily hold even a Class 5; it would do little more than annoy a Class 7.  
  
Something rustled softly behind him and Peter gulped. "Maybe I'd better hurry," he breathed, starting off again at an increased pace. "I don't ... uh ... want to be late for my date with Sandra tonight."  
  
He splashed on for some minutes, the water increasing steadily until it was past his knees. It was then that he began to hear another sound, a low groaning wheeze, this time coming from straight ahead. "Oh, boy. Game time."  
  
Peter unclipped his particle thrower with a steady hand, flicking one switch with his thumb and bringing the power levels up to full. The accelerator on his back whined reassuringly in the dank stillness of the sewer. Peter glanced once down to the glowing indicator on the thrower attachment, then strode forward to meet his foe. "Easy way or hard," he called firmly. "It's up to Doctor Venkman to save the day"  
  
Without warning a dark shape detached itself from the surrounding shadows, uttering loud yells, talon-like fingers reaching clumsily for Peter's throat. The Ghostbuster braced himself and fired, a feral grin twisting his lips. "Hard way!"  
  
A stream of energized particles snaked from Peter's weapon, catching the advancing figure a grazing blow. It flew backwards under the impact of 200,000 gigahertz of pure nucleonic power. Peter crouched to realign his shot then immediately switched off before the full stream could strike. Illuminated by the harsh radiance, the figure had resolved into the recognizable shape of an old man clothed in rags, light glaring off a perfectly hairless pate.  
  
"Oh, my...." Peter breathed, dropping his thrower and starting for the man. He caught the wizened figure just as it slid down the wall, easing it to the side of the tunnel where the filthy waters ran shallowest.  
  
Limbs flapped weakly, the man's nervous system shorted out by the hyper- ionization. He gasped for air, staring at Peter through eyes which blazed with emotion. "Thank ... you," he managed, the frail body jerking convulsively. "Release ... at last."  
  
"I'm-I'm sorry!" Peter supported the wrinkled head in his palm, green eyes wide with shock, mind swirling with horror. "Hang on, Pop, I'll get help...."  
  
"No!" The old man grabbed Peter's arm with surprising force. "Let ... me die. I'm free...." Further effort on Peter's part would have been useless in any respect; the jaw dropped and the rheumy eyes became fixed. Seconds later even the spasmodic twitching ceased.  
  
Peter shook the body once. "Don't die," he begged, his voice hoarse. "Please, don't die."  
  
"Don't worry about the old one," came from the dead man's gaping mouth. "Worry about yourself."  
  
Peter released the body and drew back, rising to his feet and retrieving his thrower all in one smooth motion. Tears trickled down his face, but Peter, long adept at the skills of self-preservation, reacted without hesitation to that mocking voice. "Who are you?" he demanded, backing away several yards. The hairs on his neck stirred, the feeling of the macabre overwhelming even by Peter's seasoned standards. "What are you?"  
  
A pale nimbus of blue light emerged from the old man's chest, separating into three distinct orbs. They rose slowly, pulsing to some irregular beat. "We are the Q'utah."  
  
The words were unspoken yet clear in Peter's thoughts. Unfazed thanks to long experience, Peter sneered. "We are the Ghostbusters," he snapped. "And you are history." He snapped off a bolt of energized protons while throwing himself to the side of the tunnel until his back was protected by the grimy walls. His first shot went wild, smacking into the ceiling and splattering into a million shards of light. The orbs bobbed closer, dodging Peter's second shot with deceptive ease. The brown-haired psychologist ducked instinctively as they dove for him, angling for a clear shot. His ankle twisted on him and he went down, but was up almost immediately, spitting his mouth clear of the foul water and scrambling to gain his feet before his foes reached him.  
  
He didn't make it.  
  
"We are the Q'utah, the orbs repeated, reuniting into a single mass. "And we are now you!" With that triumphant if silent cry, the extra-dimensional intelligence descended on the downed Peter Venkman; he raised his arms in defense but to no avail -- unimpeded by either flesh or brown uniform, the Q'utah sped to and into Peter's chest ... and vanished.  
  
Sensations flooded him, a cacophony of thoughts and emotions twisted, alien -- malevolent. Personalities rose in trio, unbelievably ancient, skittering like spiders through his brain. Peter's own personality recoiled as evil swelled in his breast, and hatred, and enjoyment of others' pain. Most of all, however, overriding all other feelings and thoughts was an all-consuming terror which filled Peter Venkman to the very core of his being, fanning the spark of encroaching madness to a full flame.  
  
Peter whimpered, fists batting at his own chest and head, but there was no retreat from the inhabitants of his mind. "We are the Q'utah," they said using Peter's mouth, "and we wish to feed."  
  
Peter shook his head wildly, wresting back command of his own faculties only with a surge of effort. "N-no," he gasped. "I-I am Peter ... Venk-- Venkman.... I am...."  
  
"You are ours," the Q'utah replied scornfully, this time as thoughts rather than words. "As Robeck was ours."  
  
"You ... yours to do ... what?" Peter managed, lips resisting the words. His arms and legs twitched as the Q'utah fought him for the single body; Peter fought back, exerting that iron will that had ever been a part of him.  
  
"Listen to us, human," they ordered, turning their efforts to generating a flood of the purest agony Peter had ever experienced. "Obey!  
  
"No," he moaned, clutching his head. "No.... Get out!" Panicked, he threw himself against the tunnel wall, beating his head against the living rock once and then falling to his knees. "Get out! He wrapped trembling arms around his chest and began to rock, whimpering pitiably under his breath, and repeating over and over, "Get out, get out...."  
  
How long this went on Peter was never to know -- for him it could have been an eternity. Finally, the pain abated and Peter raised his head. "We are the Q'utah," he said. "and we wish to feed."  
  
"No!" Peter shook his head wildly, recapturing control of his vocal centers only with a visible effort. "N-no," he gasped. "I-I am Peter ... Venk-- Venkman.... I am...."  
  
"You are ours," his own lips replied scornfully. "As Robeck was ours, so shall you be until the end of your mortal time."  
  
"Why?" Peter managed. Emotions chased themselves across his features, anger and delight, confidence and despair as each mind tested its individual 'muscle' against Peter's firm grip. At long last, however, it was Peter Venkman who peered out of the green eyes, the psychologist having come off victorious ... for the moment. With a grunt he forced his legs to stiffen and staggered forward a few steps. The Q'utah abruptly ceased their own efforts, and Peter slipped and fell in the sudden release. "I...."  
  
He broke off, doubling over at a new, wrenching pain, the feeling that every muscle and nerve was being twisted out of shape. He opened his mouth to scream, a searing agony in his face nearly making him black out. To his astonishment, two small objects fell out, an instinctive grab nabbing one of them before it could be lost in the sluggishly running water. "I lost a cap?" he managed, clasping his face against another wave. He probed his gumline with his tongue; to his horror, two new, pointed teeth had emerged and were slowly growing. "Oh, my--!" There were other things happening to his body as well, without outward manifestation but discernible from the pain which continued to wrack his gut. Muscles ached, his heart beat faster, respiration increasing under a heightened need for oxygen. "No!" Like a wild animal he started to run, streaking wildly toward somewhere -- anywhere! -- seeking freedom from the ravages of his own mind.  
  
Much later, exhausted and panting, he slowed his headlong rush and leaned against a slime-covered wall, trembling like a leaf. "Listen to us, human," the voices ordered, speaking for the first time since Peter had begun to run. Peter froze. "You are strong. You will serve us well. How do you feel?"  
  
Peter shuddered, a new sensation assailing his senses, as painful in its way as were the others. He licked his lips. "I feel ... hungry."  
  
*** 


	3. Chapter 3

The long concrete ribbon stretched eternally as mile after mile unfolded under Peter's feet. He walked aimlessly through the City, through brownstone and slum, eyes cast downward. The streets were far from deserted despite the late hour -- the City That Never Sleeps had earned its reputation honestly, from all-night delis to midnight movies. Passers-by ranged from youthful hoodlums bedecked in chains to well-dressed matrons, whose jewels glistened in the neon. Peter saw none of them, his emotions so muddled as to boarder on numbness, his attention turned inward forcibly away from the strange hunger which overwhelmed every external sensation.  
  
Yo, Q'utah! Got a question for ya! Peter hailed the nether-entities silently, his mind reaching out to initiate contact. He waited for an answer, not altering his pace. When none was forthcoming, he tried again, also without moving his lips. Hey! Anyone there?  
  
This time the lack of response brought a smile to his lips, little more than a grimace but as close to genuine as he was capable of coming. That proves it, he thought with enough relief to weaken his legs. They can project and influence but they can't read my mind. My thoughts are still private and I'm still ... Peter Venkman.  
  
As he walked, he'd been experimenting, and the Q'utah, secure in their power, seemed quite content to allow it in the main. There'd been a ruckus a few times over his attempts to psionically evict them -- he'd come so close to succeeding! His training and knowledge in the areas made him a formidable opponent; unfortunately, his natural abilities were severely limited, his psi rating above normal but not excessively so. Feeling some semblance of threat, however, the Q'utah had stopped him quickly, using that intense pain they could generate to break his concentration. Given temporary control, they'd used his own body to inflict minor injuries and indignity, non-life threatening but effective. The episode had been brief, for the Q'utah were still strangers to his body and inexperienced. Peter had regained the upper hand in seconds, but their influence grew steadily as time progressed, and Peter feared their eventual victory. Since then, he'd moved, walked, forced his body to obey while fighting that eerie hunger that of itself was the most disturbing aspect of the nightmare.  
  
He'd remained underground all day, his one attempt at reaching open air aborted by a phobia so intense the very thought of light had dropped him in a quivering huddle. He'd sensed the Q'utah's hand in the induced terror -- a defense mechanism, no doubt -- but had been unable to conquer it. Once night had fallen he'd exited the hated sewers, not knowing where to go or what to do, and too engaged in the struggle for control to care.  
  
"Why are you smiling?" a hated voice asked in the back of his mind. "You have found something to amuse you?"  
  
"Just wondering," Peter murmured under his breath, "whether or not I can turn into a bat. That might be fun."  
  
"Your body is slightly enhanced," was the answer. "Our energy strengthens you. But you are not a shape-changer. Be content to be our servant."  
  
Peter didn't reply to that beyond rolling his eyes. Instead, he turned his attention to a smoky window front directly to his left. With the overhead street lamps behind him and the illumination of the great neon sign above, the glass served as a respectable mirror, reflecting back his own image. He studied it closely, wincing at what he saw there. Ruby eyes stared back at him, desperation so clear in their depths as to be nearly painful to behold. The dark brown uniform Peter wore was stained and grimy and stank of the sewer, as did the brown hair that now stood up in unruly spikes all over his head. Peter grimaced, his expression even more sour when his stomach growled in response. "Not only am I starving," he grumbled, running a thumbnail over the nineteen-hour beard shadowing cheeks and jaw, "I look like a derelict. Wonder how many people I scared tonight."  
  
"The night is ours," one of the parasitic aliens crowed gleefully, expanding Peter's lungs as evidence of the fact. "We have owned the night of this world for a millennium and one."  
  
"Happy Birthday," Venkman returned dryly, hate welling up like bile in the back of his throat.  
  
"Thanks. Got me a present, big boy?"  
  
It took a moment for Peter to realize that the voice had originated outside his head and was of a decidedly feminine nature. He turned, directing his step toward an alley only feet away, (Serve the Q'utah right if I got mugged.) then stopping to view the female who waited there. She was petite, no more than five feet without the four-inch heels, and wore her frizzy light hair short. She was also, Peter noted with dismay, about fourteen years old.  
  
"Shouldn't you still be in school?" he quipped, aborting the remark that a decollete neckline did her boyish figure very little justice.  
  
The girl stepped closer, pressing her body full length against his, and anchoring them in place by wrapping her arms intimately around his hips. "I like school, mister. Think you could teach me anything?"  
  
Peter turned so that the streetlamp fell across her face. Despite her years, her eyes were hollowed as though she hadn't slept in days, and there were fine lines crisscrossing her forehead and mouth. Had he wanted to look, Peter was sure he would find the tell-tale tracks of a mainliner -- one who injects drugs intravenously. Crank, he diagnosed, catching sight of her pupils by light of a passing truck. Or ice. He shook his head sadly. Such a waste. Aloud, "Sweetheart, I doubt there's much of anything I could teach you."  
  
"We could teach her," a voice interrupted from a point directly behind his eyes. "Teach her how to die -- teach you to feed. We need!"  
  
Fatigue. Lust. Disgust. Anger. All poured from the girl in waves, her emotions becoming Peter's own. The hunger slammed into him then, worse than before and having nothing to do with the empty state of his stomach. Peter recoiled as though scalded, coming up short against a urine-scented brick wall. "No."  
  
"Yes!"  
  
Unaware of the internal dialogue taking place, the young prostitute moved close again and ran her fingers up and down his arm, stopping at the Ghostbusters insignia sewn onto the sleeve. "Hey, I know who you are! You're one of them guys what catches ghosts, right?" She donned an impish grin, looking heartbreakingly younger. "Wow! I never did a celebrity before! I almost don't want to charge you ... much."  
  
Exerting themselves, the Q'utah forced Peter's arms up until they wrapped around the girl, his fingers gouging the flesh of her shoulders. She winced but didn't pull away. "If you want it rough," she gasped, gulping, "I-it'll cost extra, okay?"  
  
The Q'utah laughed and it was Peter's voice that emerged, a low grisly chuckle. Peter clamped down on it immediately, concentrating all his attention on his hands. Grimly he forced his fingers open one by one, releasing the girl and stepping back. "No," he gasped, staggering farther away. "I won't."  
  
That won him a pout. "I'm real good, Mister Ghostbuster. No AIDS or anything." She extended her hand toward his groin and Peter again moved backward, this time reaching the safety of the street.  
  
"I won't let you," he snarled so fiercely that the girl, thinking he was addressing her, also recoiled.  
  
"M-maybe some other time then," and she was gone, melded with the shadows.  
  
Peter wiped his forehead, resisting an urge that was not his to follow her, and ignoring the screaming rebuke that only he could hear. "We will have what we need!" came through loud and clear, as did the low ache of his still-developing canines. "Our control will grow and you will obey us ... forever."  
  
Peter believed them. The struggle to release the girl had taken nearly every erg of mental energy he possessed. There was no choice, he needed help and he needed it now. Resolutely he turned his steps downtown toward the firehouse.  
  
"We know what you are about," the Q'utah whispered as though it would be hard to guess. "Your friends cannot help you." Peter didn't answer, just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. "We control you much now," the voices went on balefully, a tripled symphony of malice.  
  
"They will not know anything is wrong."  
  
"We will force you to kill them."  
  
Could they? Peter didn't know. He'd nearly killed the girl. He'd wanted to kill the girl. But if he waited much longer his control would be completely gone and he'd be a helpless slave. This could be his last chance.  
  
His stride had by now taken him several blocks. He stopped again and stared into the next window he came to, forcing himself to meet his own eyes there. "I don't want them to see me like this, he whispered with a sense of shame. They'll never act if they see me like this first -- they'll need time to absorb the situation and ... I don't want them to see me like this. He imagined the horrified sympathy that would be on Ray's and Egon's faces, and shuddered. They'll never defend themselves if they don't have time to prepare. But how much time do I have before I can't control ... them? There was no choice. He would have to take the chance that his friends were sharp enough to act decisively no matter what their feelings.  
  
He gulped and moved on toward Mott Street. "I'm going to tell them what's wrong," he decided, paying no heed to the continued threats from within. "You can't stop me from doing this."  
  
"We will stop you! We will make you rip out their throats! We will make you feed"  
  
Peter ignored them for the firehouse was now in sight. Fatigued muscles trembled as he fumbled for his key and inserted it in the lock, trepidatious longing tight in his chest. As expected, the garage was deserted; Janine would have long ago gone home. She had a hot bath and dinner, Peter thought enviously, and is sleeping between clean sheets. By now even the worried Ghostbusters would have turned in. He made his way upstairs without incident, able to see perfectly even in the near total darkness. Rather than actually changing his body, the Q'utah seemed to have simply reinforced what he already had. Sight, hearing, smell and physical strength were all augmented somehow, and weakened though he felt, Peter could sense some form of energy coursing through his veins, driving him on.  
  
The second floor was dim but not completely dark, lit from without by both streetlamps and business signs. He felt it then, a strange force flaring in his brain like a miniature nova. It grew then exited invisibly and he could sense it spreading outward, engulfing his friends. "What just happened?" he asked aloud, puzzled.  
  
This time the Q'utah were silent.  
  
The room, however, was not. Peter followed a snorting sound to the couch and hiked one eye over the backrest. Winston Zeddemore lay full length there, still fully dressed and obviously enjoying the reward of the righteous. Relief washing over him at the sight, Peter reached down and shook one powerful shoulder, receiving for his trouble an impression of dependable foundation and friendship. "Winston?" A light sleeper, the man should have shot up like a rocket; instead, he snorted again and burrowed deeper against the arm of the couch. Frowning, Peter tried again. "Yo! Zed! You in there, booby?" This time there was a response, not from the negro but from within.  
  
"Do you think us fools?" a voice sneered in his ear. "We grant the sleep that cannot be broken. We will not let you tell anyone about us. If you try again, we will kill them." There was a pause as of deliberation. "This one could not resist if we were to feed," came seductively.  
  
"Slimeballs," Peter groaned, tears forming in his eyes. A new thought presented itself. He would have help, if not tonight than come morning! His stomach rumbled, hunger mixing and roiling with need. Without protest from the Q'utah, he made a first stop in the kitchen, ducking into the refrigerator and emerging with an apple. "Vampires are supposed to drink blood," he said aloud. "But I probably need a little more fiber in my diet than that." He ripped off a piece with his canines, chewed and swallowed. To his stomach's delight, it stayed down. "Terr'f'c," he mumbled around another mouthful.  
  
"Your body must eat even as we must feed," the Q'utah informed him, breaking a minutes' long silence during which Peter finished off not only the apple, but a glass of milk and a bologna sandwich. "First you feed, then us."  
  
"Fat chance," Peter growled, dumping his empty glass into the sink. Thinking ahead, he stuffed another apple into his coverall pocket, then directed his step into the living room and to the little desk beside the entertainment center. Without turning on the light, he rummaged in the top drawer and found a pad and pen.  
  
The note was harder to write than Peter had ever imagined it could be. How do you tell your best friends that you are no longer human ... maybe even no longer alive? Or worse, that those same friends might have to ensure he stayed no longer alive ... or functional ... whatever. Engrossed in the dual battle of finding his words and fighting the Q'utah's attempts at usurption, he'd started it twice, before a shuffling sound alerted him that he was no longer alone. Reacting instinctively, he melted back behind the circular staircase where the shadows were thickest. The sleepers could not have awakened; intuitively he knew that the Q'utahs' hypnotic command ensured that. A prowler, then, who could be dangerous to his enthralled friends! Tensing, he tracked the unseen figure by sound alone, waiting until it had taken a single step past his position before leaping into action. One well-muscled arm he slipped around the man's neck; the other hand he brought up to cover his mouth, preventing the man from crying out -- not that it would have done him any good with the rest of the house comatose.  
  
The intruder struggled mere seconds before going still; rather than striking out, he raised one hand to tap his captor on the arm. Cautiously, Venkman eased his hold enough to hear the whispered, "Peter?"  
  
"Ray?" He spun the other around to find himself peering into a pair of delighted brown eyes above a wide grin. "Ray, what are you doing awake?"  
  
"I couldn't fall asleep tonight. I was worried about you." Ray's gladness spilled over into his voice, his whole face alight. "Where have you been? We've searched everywhere." He grasped Peter's forearms and it was only then that Peter realized how painful his own grip must be -- his fingers were sunk into Ray's flesh. He closed his eyes briefly, his new psionic powers transmitting a steady wave of gentle affection and concern from the younger man. Peter basked in it, having needed this kind of comfort for far too long. Ray was so open. ... So much warmth.... And to feed on it directly like this....  
  
With a start he pried open his fingers and stepped away; touching Ray felt too good right now. It was so easy to ... let go. "Ran into a little ... trouble," he began, clearing his throat. "Back in the sewer."  
  
"Yes?" Stantz prodded, reaching for a lampswitch. Peter grabbed his wrist, stopping the action then releasing him immediately.  
  
"Don't. No lights. I can see you well enough."  
  
Ray hesitated, then nodded. "All right." Another pause. "Tell me what's wrong?"  
  
"Wrong?" A bitter smile twisted Peter's lips. "Hope you've got some time -- it's quite a list." He deliberately turned away, making sure his features were concealed in the shadows, though it was unlikely anyone without enhanced vision like his own would be able to see more than generalities. The hunger was almost all-consuming now, and growing by the minute. But he had to hold on if he was going to receive the help he needed. A glance into gentle brown eyes brought the realization of just how concerned Ray had been for him -- actually frightened in fact, if the continuing empathics were to be believed. Perhaps the Q'utah could make good on their threat to force his body to kill his friends. Perhaps not. But he had to hold on -- he needed Ray's expertise if there was to be any end to this nightmare. Besides, he admitted honestly, even aside from technical assistance, Ray's sympathy and support were exactly what he needed right now.  
  
"What's wrong?" he repeated, wetting dry lips. "To begin with, I killed a man last night." Ray drew in his breath in a sharp hiss and reached for Peter's shoulder, but the psychologist moved away and Ray let his hand fall to his side. "It was an old man, Ray, must'a been a hundred if he was a day. Couldn't even walk much any more. He ... stumbled at me out of the shadows and I ... shot him."  
  
Silence draped them, so heavy as to muffle even the living city without. Within its cocoon Peter could hear his own heart, beating loud as thunder. "Is ... that why you left?" Ray asked carefully, clearly at a loss as to how to proceed.  
  
Venkman shook his head. "If it was only that...." A short bark of laughter escaped him, hysteria as close as was the craving. He reined himself in, wrapping his emotions in a jumbled knot; it wouldn't do to lose it here -- not so closed to what he needed so badly. "Killing a man was bad enough," he went on, forcing a note of calm. "But it wasn't just a man that I shot. This man was ... possessed."  
  
"A ghost?" Ray stepped closer, brightening. This was something he could understand. "A human controller or nether-entity?"  
  
"Vampire."  
  
The word filled the room, bringing with it an indefinable chill that stirred the edges of the consciousness. Peter repeated the word, tasting it as though for the first time. "Or should I say, vampires. There are three of them -- old, evil. Hungry."  
  
Cat-sharp vision pierced the gloom easily, though Peter needed no special talent to imagine Ray's frown. "Vampires," the engineer echoed blankly. "But vampires aren't N.E.'s -- they're corporeal beings -- humans transformed into the undead. Well, according to legend, anyway. The only ones we ever met were shape-shifters, like Egon said."  
  
"The Q'utah were never human." Peter traced patterns idly over the back of the sofa; the nappy material rasped ever so lightly under his fingertips. Oblivious, Winston slept on undisturbed. "A long time ago they came to our world from ... somewhere else. They were the origin of the vampire legends; they bragged that they were the worst of their race to have ever existed until they were driven out by their own ... people, for want of a better word."  
  
"We killed many," the Q'utah gloated, but only Peter could hear.  
  
"The bodies were destroyed?" Ray guessed, peeking over the top of the sofa at the slumbering Zeddemore. "Is he all right?".  
  
Venkman nodded, not smiling when Winston emitted a loud snort and turned over. "He won't wake up until I'm gone. They have powerful psionic capabilities." Ray was so close Peter could feel him body and mind; unsettled, he left the couch to take up a stance by the writing desk. "It wasn't their bodies that were destroyed," he picked up after a minute. "In their own dimension they don't really have bodies -- they inhabit other living beings like parasites. The Q'utah are different from the type of vampires we've met; they're not Bela Lugosi undead. When the host body eventually dies, they move on to another, one after another until...." He stopped, a pain far deeper than physical making his voice shake. It was Ray who finished the sentence.  
  
"Until they got to you." He came nearer, again reaching for Peter's shoulder and this time the psychologist did not retreat from his touch. Ray's hand was warm against his skin, the heat radiating even through the filthy uniform. There were other sensations, too, love and concern -- old bonds washing through the psychologist in waves. Mixed in was one the psychologist recognized as one of his own -- the desire to feed. The results were ... intoxicating ... and then Peter had again jerked away.  
  
"Hunger!"  
  
"For the love of ... stay away from me!" The command had to be forced for the last thing in this world or the next Peter Venkman wanted was for Ray to move away. But he made the effort and the words came. "They're here now, Ray," he gritted, clenching his fists. "They want blood -- need blood to survive and ... God forgive me, I think I do, too." He stepped into the weak light from the window and the younger man retreated a single step from the ruby glow which lit Peter's eyes. The gleaming canines were even now over an inch long. "The hunger ... hurts. I don't know how long I ... can hold ... them back."  
  
He turned to flee then, feeling his control nearly gone. Ray moved to intercept him, his white pajamas giving him an unearthly aspect, like a specter himself. "No, Peter, don't go. Not yet."  
  
Unafraid of his friend's transformation, Ray laid his hand on Peter's back, and Peter again tasted the essence within -- the pure pulsating life force only millimeters beneath skin. With a start, Peter again jerked free. "You don't understand," he managed, his voice shaking harder. "It's you I ... they ... want. Your blood."  
  
Ray's hesitation lasted a fleeting moment, and then he was turning Peter towards him, his eyes as warm as his skin. "If you leave here, you're going to kill someone. Legend says that if you do, you really will be damned ... whatever that means."  
  
"No alternative," Peter returned. It was getting difficult to talk over the swelling in his own throat, and his proximity to food ... Ray ... reduced his concentration to shards. Whether he stayed or not, THEY would soon control completely. "I'm going to be a murderer, Ray ... unless you can ... end it now?" He examined his friend with a spark of hope dimming the hunger-lust. To be dead was certainly better than being a murderer and a slave. The spark flared and then faded when Ray bit his lip.  
  
"Not right now," he said, spreading both hands apologetically. "I have an idea on how to drive them out, but...."  
  
"I said end it." Peter grabbed the younger man's shoulders, his expression conveying his meaning more clearly than any words. "Forever."  
  
Dark eyes widened fearfully. "I couldn't do that!"  
  
Peter's hope died. In an abrupt move he released Ray, shoving him aside. "Then I have to go. If I stay...."  
  
Ray snagged his arm again, hanging on for all he was worth. "You've got to stay, Peter. If you leave, you'll kill someone and there won't be anything any of us can do."  
  
"We need the blood," the psychologist intoned defeatedly. "There's no other choice."  
  
Ray smiled gently. "Maybe one other."  
  
Peter attempted to free himself but the younger man's hold was tenacious. "What do you mean?"  
  
"Me."  
  
Peter stared, that single soft-spoken word fanning the hunger to new heights. He lifted his free hand and placed in on Ray's chest, feeling the thump-thump of a healthy heart against his palm. Ray was young and strong, his emotions were close to the surface making them eminently assessable. The meal would be enjoyable.  
  
The words were not his own ... and yet they were for Peter, who had been raised by a man who made a living out of deceit and a woman who had learned the hard way not to trust, this lowering of the barriers was an experience never before dreamed. "I can feel you," he said, awed. "Every emotion ... thought ... memory...."  
  
"He will be good," the ancient evil rejoiced, forcing Peter to close the distance to their prey. "Taste him."  
  
Enchanted by this one-way mental intimacy Peter obeyed they prodding, running light fingers across Ray's cheek. "I love you too, Ray," he whispered, responding to the unspoken sentiment, awash in perfectly unshielded affection. "You are my little brother in every way that counts." He blinked, the realization of what he was doing slamming into his soul like a speeding locomotive. "Which is why I'm not going to kill you. I'm a vampire, kid; if I stick around I'll do something I can't help ... and neither of us will like it."  
  
Refusing to be persuaded, Ray insistently shook Peter's arm. "You said it yourself -- you're not a vampire. You're still human inside -- still a man. I've trusted that man with my life before; I'm willing to do it again now."  
  
Peter stared, uncomprehending and frightened. "What are you suggesting?"  
  
"You need blood -- take mine." Ray smiled shyly at Peter's incredulous look. "I doubt you're going to need more than I can handle, and if you can just make it through tonight...." He left the words dangle, allowing Peter to finish the thought for himself. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow Egon and Winston will be involved. Tomorrow brings hope.  
  
"One boy can do nothing," the entities boasted. "Three even les. Our power has conquered centuries."  
  
Peter raised his right hand and very gently cupped Ray's jaw and cheek. "Do you know what you're offering?" he rasped. "Or what you're risking? If I can't stop...."  
  
Ray swallowed hard but nodded without reservation. "It's your only chance. You take just enough to survive. That'll buy us the time we need to help you."  
  
There was no answer to that, and no time to seek another. "Ours!" the Q'utah crowed, exerting themselves more strongly than ever before. Peter hesitated one split second, long enough to peer deeply into those trusting amber eyes. "R--" And the Q'utah took him. Control vanished entirely leaving nothing but the fire which seared every nerve and embraced this willing sacrifice to the flames.  
  
He pulled Ray closer, again feeling that outrush of mental energies like a hot wind. Ray came to him unresistingly, lifting his chin to allow Peter access to his throat. Peter bit down immediately and Ray jerked aside, Peter's new fangs digging into shoulder muscles and skin. Ray gasped at the sudden pain but did not pull away. His eyes were dulling under the Q'utah's psionic assault, and he spoke dreamily, as if distracted. "Promise me, Peter," he mumbled. "Promise that you'll always come back to me for blood rather than touch anyone else."  
  
Peter licked his lips lightly, maddened beyond bearing. "Sure," he muttered, slashing downward again. Ray cried out softly but did not move, locked as he was now in some type of semi-aware state.  
  
Tooth parted skin and rich dark fluid filled Peter's mouth; he tasted it, sputtered and spat it out. Ugh! Revulsion filled him and bafflement. The hunger was there, why couldn't he drink? Wasn't that what vampires were supposed to do? Even as he asked, the Q'utah drove him to sink his teeth into Ray's throat again, this time slashing deeper and allowing the blood to trail down the younger man's neck and chest. It was then that Peter understood -- the appetite was for more than the coppery-salt of blood; rather, it was for emotions and feelings, thoughts and memories -- the very essence of the man himself that Peter now fed upon. In his heightened empathic state, he experienced all that made up the being named Ray Stantz, felt it soak into his own substance to become a part of him, flowing with the steady rush of blood which was now staining the carpet. Emotions not his own filled him, carrying him along on a tidal wave of love and affection and the simple unwavering trust that was Ray Stantz.  
  
Memories rose as the entwining continued. Peter found himself in two places at once -- both watching and experiencing. He was Peter Venkman and he was also incredibly small, waving tiny fists to the sky. He tasted warmed milk from a glass bottle and gazed adoringly up at a pretty, sharp- featured woman named "Mom." Long, curly red hair trailed over fragile white shoulders, and there were lines of anxiety etched around her mouth and bright green eyes.  
  
The farm house was visible through the dirty barn window; it was whitewashed and barren, set against the gently rolling hills of New York State. He/they refocussed, using the glass as a reflecting mirror; a child peered back, about eight years old, small with huge eyes and an unkempt shock of red-brown hair. He had to be quiet; if he made a sound then Mr. Hanley would catch him here in the barn. He held up his newest acquisition -- a Captain Steel comic book -- examining the cover by the light of the dying sun. Young muscles ached, having been worked too hard, but there was also the singular happiness that came from these few minutes' escape from unkind reality into the fantasy world of blue-uniformed superheroes, who spoke to little boys with kindness, and lived nobly, a place where love was more than a hopeless hurt.  
  
He/they looked up, startled by a shadow, quivering at the appearance of a whipcord lean man with a weathered face. Marble hard eyes regarded the youthful ones unsmilingly, even as the newcomer snapped a leather belt against his palm. "On a farm indolence is a sin," he grated, striding forward. "I know how to learn youngsters better." Something hurt and the pretty dream world crashed to halt.  
  
He was thirteen -- his thirteenth birthday, in fact -- and possessed of a brand new winter coat, courtesy of Great Aunt Lois. None of Ernest's hand- me-down coats this winter! he cheered, running his fingers across the navy blue wool. It's so warm! And it fits! It fits me! Beaming with joy, he bent his back to his task, that of tossing hay into the stalls for the livestock. Though it had to be just past dawn, there was no weariness in this work; hard labor had produced strong arms and powerful shoulders, and the exertion was more pleasure than strain.  
  
He breathed deep the clean rural air, enjoying the dual fragrances of vegetation and animal. Guess Old Man Hanley was right, Peter thought with no lessening of disgust for the man. Indolence on a farm doesn't pay. "Hello, Lorna."  
  
The greeting was made tenderly in a high, childish voice, and answered by a quiet lowing from beyond the first stall. A russet head popped over the top, placid dark eyes regarding him with what passed as bovine adoration. The cow accepted the carrot gracefully, returning a sloppy kiss by way of thanks.  
  
Another picture superimposed itself even as the barn faded: that of Peter himself as a much younger man, handsome and proud and brilliant in the eyes of the sixteen-year old boy who'd asked him directions on campus one day. Peter both saw and was himself, idealized and almost inhumanly perfect, much as that nearly-forgotten comic book hero had been so many years before. The effect was both embarrassing and flattering at once.  
  
All this Peter lived in an instant, these images and a thousand others flowing around him and through him in a river. Yet, as vital as these were, it was the emotions which Peter savored most; morsel by delicious morsel they grew, filling him to overflowing with the loving friendship which had grown over the course of half a lifetime. Peter saw-felt-sensed and knew himself to be beloved, and the returning tenderness rose to mingle in his heart. There was something else now: a fear-flavor that had not been there before. It, too, was delicious, an exotic spice added to the meal. Dimly, from somewhere very far away, he heard a soft voice pleading with him for ... something ... over and over, but the entities within told him to ignore it, and the sensations were so delightful that he was only too happy to oblige. Soon the pleading faded away leaving only the spice. Intoxicated by these new sensations, Peter Venkman gave himself over, revelling in the sheer exhilaration of the feed.  
  
A long time later, when his mind and heart could hold no more and the Q'utah had lapsed into sated silence, he raised his head with a sigh. "I feel good," he grunted, spitting his mouth clean. "Strong -- replenished. Good." He opened his eyes then and the words that he had intended to speak -- that he was grateful for the gift, that he loved Ray as much as he'd sensed the return -- choked him at the first sight of his friend. The only thing holding Ray Stantz upright were Peter's arms locked around his chest and waist, for by all appearances the young man was long unconscious ... or worse. The auburn head hung back limply, exposing the slashed throat, chalk white face and blue lips forming a stark contrast to the blood which soaked the fronts of both Ray's white pajamas and Peter's dirty brown uniform. Alarmed, Peter shook him roughly.  
  
"Ray?" He called anxiously, his words still slurred by the long canines. The younger man did not so much as stir and Peter shook him again, harder. "Come on, kid, say something!" But there was no reply save the shallow, raspy breathing that converted the liquid fire in Peter's veins into barren ice.  
  
Stricken, Peter pulled his friend closer, supporting him carefully in his arms, allowing the lolling head to roll forward against his chest. "I didn't mean it, Ray," he babbled, laying his cheek against disordered auburn hair. "I didn't know how to stop!" He stiffened, casting his eyes heavenward. "He trusted me."  
  
"The boy always was a fool," an amused voice answered from within his own head. "You've said as much yourself."  
  
"Only when it came to trusting me," Peter retorted, a tear slipping from his ruby eyes and trailing down his face. With an abrupt gesture, he swept Ray up as he would a child; to his revitalized muscles the man's weight was insignificant. "Egon!" he thundered, abandoning the slumbering Zeddemore for the spiral staircase. "Egon! Wake up!"  
  
Neither he nor Winston so much as stirred at his beckon. "Tell me how to wake them up," Peter demanded harshly. "Or I'll take Ray to the emergency room myself."  
  
"It is nearly dawn," a voiceless voice replied. "The sun rises. We can not permit ourselves to be trapped by the light."  
  
"It can destroy you as well," another added harshly. "After the change you became as vulnerable as we."  
  
"You think that's going to stop me?" Peter retorted, privately wondering if that were truth or lie and not particularly caring either way. Suicide by lethal suntan held a certain macabre attraction at this point. The Q'utah must have had long experience with this reaction, however, for suddenly he was shaking, filled with such a phobic loathing of even the thought of Earth's golden star that he nearly bolted then and there. He caught himself at the last moment, the feeling of Ray's body in his arms giving him the tenacity to tarry. "This is Ray's life I'm talking about."  
  
The third entity laughed. "It is nothing to us if the boy dies, or to you any longer. There are others where he came from who walk the city streets. We will feed well."  
  
That fueled Peter's temper like nothing else could have. "Someday you'll all fall," he grated. "When that happens, I intend to be there to watch."  
  
"But your friend will not," the second voice taunted. "And his death bonds you to us forever."  
  
That brought Peter's mind back to the limp form he was clasping so tightly to his chest. Ray's breathing was becoming even more labored, and the bluish tinge to his lips was even now extending itself to the rest of his face. "Hang on, kid," he whispered. "I'll get you help no matter what it costs."  
  
The entities rebelled then, sending a single thread of vitriol through his nervous system. Peter gasped, his concentration splintered by the pain. The Q'utah used the opportunity to direct his steps back across the room toward the garage access. Still carrying Ray, Peter staggered several yards before he could reclaim himself; he dug in his heels, bringing them all to a halt. "Not ... until he's ... safe," he snarled, reversing his course.  
  
The background muttering inside his skull grew but the pseudo-vampires were unable to prevent his climb to the third-floor bunkroom; accepting the futility in this particular attempt, the vitriol cooled leaving Venkman limp with relief. "Tell me how to wake them up," he commanded, making his way to the bunkroom. Bootheels clumped across the hardwood floor, stopping when he'd reached Egon's bedside. The physicist lay sprawled on his back, arms spread at his sides and an expression of utter serenity on his face. Across the room, floating lightly above the foot of Ray's bed, Slimer snored loudly, and Peter sighed, enjoying the familiar sights and sounds of his erstwhile residence. Beats the sewer, he thought dryly, catching a whiff of his own clothes. Aloud, "Tell me how to wake them!" But there was no reply from the entities, and the sleepers continued to sleep.  
  
Peter clenched his teeth, sickened anew by the drop of blood which rolled off of Ray's soaked pajama's to stain Egon's sheets crimson. Infuriated, he kicked out, actually moving Egon's bed several feet though disturbing the physicist not at all. Across the room Slimer grunted something and flipped over in mid air, pulling his glow-in-the-dark blanket tighter around his neck. "There has to be a solution," Venkman stated firmly. "I'm not going to let Ray die." He stood for a moment, considering his options. "If I leave, the psionic control keeping Egon and Winston asleep with fade, but there's no guarantee that either of them will wake up naturally before morning. Even if they do, they may not think to check on Ray before ..." The words, "... it's too late," added themselves to his sentence of their own volition. He dismissed them instantly. "Never too late," he said with a fierce determination.  
  
Coming to a decision he very gently lay Ray on the bed next to Spengler, positioning him in the crook of one sinewy arm. He smiled slightly as Egon, murmuring in the throe of some dream, turned towards the young engineer and draped his free arm across Ray's chest, holding him securely in place. "You're gonna make someone a great mother, Spengs." Satisfied, Peter straightened and lay his hand on Ray's forehead. "Hang on, kiddo. Just a little longer."  
  
With that he loosened the desperate control he was maintaining and allowed the entities to bustle him down the stairs and out the door, delaying them only long enough to pick up the pay phone across the street. He dialed "0," waiting impatiently until the operator answered. "Yes, ma'am, I'd like to make a collect call. ... The number? 555-BUST. And let it ring, will you? They may still be ... asleep."  
  
*** 


	4. Chapter 4

The phone jangled insistently, a raucous summons that rose above the steady city sounds to shatter the night. With a low curse Winston abandoned the lavatory, buttoning his pajamas as he moved. He staggered into the bunkroom and snapped on the overhead light, brushing a hovering Slimer curtly aside. "Four-thirty," he growled, padding to the phone while vigorously scrubbing his eyes with one hand. "Not even dawn and.... Whadda'ya want? ... Hello?" He listened a moment, then slammed the receiver down with a snarl.  
  
"W-Winston."  
  
"Lousy crank calls at...." Zeddemore turned, his words trailing off at first sight of the still horizontal Egon Spengler and the reason for the utter horror which creased the physicist's angular features.  
  
Now waking up to find your best friend lying in your arms isn't necessarily an unpleasant thing. Oh, it may be a bit of a surprise and he'd better have a very good reason for being there, but it needn't cause more than a minor stir in your morning if handled right.  
  
But wake up to find your best friend not only lying in your arms but also quietly bleeding his life out onto your linen, and all bets are off. This Egon found out the hard way. He had awakened at the first ring of the phone, lazy and comfortable and unwilling to bestir himself. Slowly he became aware first of a warm weight pinning his left arm to the bed, and second that he was holding someone very tightly against his side. "Doesn't feel like Janine," he'd muttered, instinctively snuggling closer. It was at that moment Winston switched on the light and Spengler got his first look at the auburn hair tickling his chin; puzzled if unalarmed, he lifted his head, blinking myopically at the visitor, craning to see the other's face. "Who? Ray?"  
  
There was something sticky soaking into the arm draped across Ray's chest; Egon frowned and released the younger man, lifting it for a closer inspection. Even without his glasses he could tell it was viscous and red. Blood.  
  
Egon's eyes went wide, horror freezing him where he lay. "W-Winston?  
  
"Ray?" Slimer wailed, taking one look at the unconscious Ghostbuster and zooming around the ceiling like a green bat. "Ray's dead!"  
  
Breaking his trance, Winston crossed the intervening space in three strides, banging his shin painfully against the nightstand in his haste. "What happened?" he demanded, managing to hand Spengler his glasses while hopping on one foot.  
  
"I ... I don't know." Egon carefully donned his glasses, grimacing at the scarlet drops which rolled off the silk sleeve of his nightshirt as he moved. He touched his mouth, then examined his fingers suspiciously. "I-I didn't...?"  
  
"'Course you didn't," Winston snapped, levering his arm under Ray's shoulders. "It looks like he was put here after you were asleep." He lifted the limp form, waiting until Spengler had extricated himself before laying the engineer gently down again and wrapping his fingers around Ray's wrist. "Cold, clammy skin ... racing pulse. Shock. Call an ambulance, Egon. Fast."  
  
"Shock!" Slimer echoed, coming to light on the footboard. "Ray's dying! Yucky red."  
  
"Blood loss?" Egon asked, striving valiantly to recover his aplomb while silently agreeing with Slimer's evaluation. Zeddemore nodded. "Bad?"  
  
"Bad as I've ever seen." He exchanged a worried look with the blond before turning his attention back to Stantz. "Slimer, go fetch the first aid kit out of the bathroom; I'll see what I can do to stop him losing any more blood."  
  
"What there is of it," Egon murmured, picking up the phone.  
  
While Egon dialed, Winston collected pillows from three of the beds, shoving them under Ray's knees, thus bringing his legs higher than his heart. Slimer was back in seconds bearing a white and red tin in both hands. Winston cleaned the slime off on the sheets then opened the lid and extracted a roll of gauze. This he pressed against Ray's throat, holding it firmly but gently in place. These ministration produced the barest tinge of color in Ray's face but little beyond that -- the young man's breathing came in even shallower gasps, and his lips were still blue. "Egon?" Winston called, interrupting the other's rapid-fire speech into the phone.  
  
Spengler placed his hand over the receiver to shoot his comrade a frightened look. "What is it?"  
  
Zeddemore met that look grimly. "Tell them to hurry," he said quietly. "I don't think Ray's got much longer to live."  
  
***  
  
It was evening.  
  
How he knew this Peter was unable to explain, but there was something inside of him, some internal clock that reminded him as if with gentle chimes that the sun had set and he should be about.  
  
"To hunt," the Q'utah prodded. "To feed. To experience life."  
  
"Someone else's life," Peter snapped, nerves strung tight as wires.  
  
"It becomes our's," the beings replied with growing urgency. "It is enough."  
  
Peter gritted his teeth, feeling two of them cutting into his lower lip. "Why not tell me what you did with Ray this morning? It obviously wasn't blood you were after, so why run the vampire scam?"  
  
"Vampires cause fear," one told him with a chuckle. "We could have lengthened your nails instead of your teeth but there is no fear in that. Fear tastes best."  
  
"Dying opens the pathways of the mind," another added. "A slow death allows us time to savor the feed."  
  
"We say a man's life passes before his eyes when he dies," Peter murmured, touching the new fangs with his forefinger. He shuddered at the remembered feeling of them slicing through the exposed flesh, could taste again the coppery salt of Ray's blood filling his mouth. He spat involuntarily and wiped his mouth on one crud infested sleeve. They hadn't needed blood at all -- even now Peter's stomach churned at the remembrance of the sticky fluid filling his mouth. Ray had bled his life away for Peter's sustenance, yet it had ended up all on the living room carpet. All for their enjoyment.  
  
"Time to hunt," echoed urgently inside his own skull. "Time to feed."  
  
Peter's leg twitched as a prelude to standing. Forcibly he controlled it, fighting off the Q'utah's bid by exerting his iron will to the utmost. "Not this time, bunkies," he snarled, wrapping his arms around his pulled up knees. "We're staying right here until morning. I'm not hurting anyone else."  
  
He concentrated on breathing. In. Out. In. You can almost get used to the sewer smell if you're exposed to it long enough. Almost. Peter's nostrils flared testing this hypothesis, an explosive sneeze the only result. Definitely worse than a catbox; the stench was overpowering. Rodents and insects scampered across his body at will; he'd tried to brush them away at first, but sunrise had brought with it a curious lassitude that numbed even the disgusted horror of the vermin. He was huddled on a cement shelf above the water level and six feet underground -- Appropriate, he thought dryly -- safe from the dreaded sunlight that baked the tarmac overhead.  
  
He'd slept fitfully all day, nightmares inhabiting both sleeping and waking time. The Q'utah, fortunately, had grown passive save for a background pressure against his skull. He knew they were there but his consciousness was inviolate ... he hoped ... and his actions, for the moment, were his own.  
  
Finding some measure of solace in that thought despite the fact that his body was screaming at him for care, he dug out the apple he'd stuffed into his pocket that morning. It was seeping juice and shriveled but Peter was so hungry he couldn't have cared less. Nibbling at it around his fangs, he devoured the fruit inside of a minute flat. It sat in the pit of his stomach like lead, filling the void there but not salving his hunger one iota. His body may have required food but the Q'utah -- and Peter -- required far more.  
  
Nausea at least temporarily assuaged, Peter allowed himself to drift, replaying the occurrences of the dawn in his mind. For a brief second he was again Ray Stantz, enthusiastic and boyish and trusting. How can anyone be that eternally cheerful after living with those people for ten years? But the winter sunlight was warm on his face and there was a gentleness in his heart for the small life entrusted to his care. Maybe farm life isn't quite as bad as I thought, Peter conceded but only to himself. The gentleness extended and grew, and Peter again felt it directed towards himself, and was both humbled and touched at the depth of devotion the younger man felt for him. For me, Peter thought, having to swallow a lump in his throat. I always knew how much the kid cared, but it's not the same as feeling it like this. He started to relax, letting Ray's warmth wash over him, admitting the reverse to be also true: he cared for Ray every bit as much -- more -- than if they'd actually been born brothers. Blood brothers now, he thought bitterly, letting Ray's affection soothe away his pain. Wish I could have felt Egon like that. Right now I need him even worse than Ray.  
  
The mental reflecting pool rippled and he was again himself, standing stiff legged and rejuvenated, holding the limp body of his young friend in his arms. His heart wrenched with anguish, his hands were saturated with blood.  
  
With a bang the vision ended. Peter jerked bolt upright, sick with worry for Ray and filled with revulsion at himself. Dried blood crackled in his clothing as he huddled smaller against the damp chill. Was Ray ... gone? He remembered Winston's voice on the phone, clinging to the memory of that strong baritone and drawing what comfort he could from its mellow tones. Winston was security -- a strong wall at his back. He'd've known what to do to help Ray. And if Winston was awake then Egon was too. They could not have helped but notice Ray -- Egon certainly couldn't! Peter had hung up reluctantly on Winston's angry demand for identification, then ducked into the nearest manhole. The last thing he'd heard before vanishing into the veritable bowels of the earth was the frantic wailing of a siren heading toward the garage. Had it been in time to save Ray? Or had Stantz succumbed to the brutalities of the night and become what Egon's prediction had named him: an animated corpse, bereft of life?  
  
No. Peter refused to accept that. Didn't the very fact that he so craved a return to the young man prove that Ray was still alive?  
  
"We hunger."  
  
"You hunger, too, boy."  
  
Hunger. Peter huddled farther back in his alcove, and licked his lips. He was ravenous -- worse than before. Not only physically but ... empty. The hunger ached and consumed and Peter knew within his soul that the only relief lay in the half-dead form of his dearest friend. Peter wanted.  
  
"No," he whispered, unfolding from his ball and standing. "Ray is my friend."  
  
"You need only taste," a voice whispered persuasively. "Touch and taste."  
  
"He wants you to come," another prodded, sending enough fire through Peter's veins to stagger him. "He waits. Dreams of your coming."  
  
"Go to him and we shall relate to you the Qutah."  
  
Weakened and confused by the assault, Peter again drowsed, waking to find himself stumbling down a back alley in a section of town he didn't recognize, his mind filled with alien images and knowledge that filled him with dejection.  
  
"How did I get here?" he asked, unable to process so much information at once. "Where am I?"  
  
"The hunt is on!" The Q'utah talked all at once, babbling their pleasure at the concept. The cacophony was mind-numbing, Peter's psionics increasing with the parasites' excitement. His mind expanded, encompassing his surroundings. He sensed the young couple behind the nearest wall, experienced their joy at welcoming their first child into the world. The next building housed a man who had just murdered a child. Peter flinched away from his perverted pleasures, though the Q'utah reached out eagerly.  
  
"Him!" they crowed even as Peter regained enough control to turn and flee. He walked for a long time, from alley to busy street, his hunger growing into a consuming madness. Red spots swirled before his eyes and he must have blacked out, for the next thing he knew he was in another featureless alley, with a young woman in a short skirt backed up against the wall. Her eyes were glazing over as Ray's had when Peter's teeth had descended on the young man's unprotected throat. She wouldn't feel a thing ... until it was time for the fear spice to be added.  
  
He recoiled, hesitated, and neared the unresisting woman again, brushing his fingers along her cheek. She was young, vibrant, full of life, and her energies crooned to him sweetly of desire and gaiety. He opened his mouth, fascinated by the little smile that touched the woman's lips, disgusted by what he was doing. I'm going to kill her, he thought with horror. He stopped, weighing alternatives, then made his decision, carefully and deliberately. Sorry, lady, but it's you or Ray and I don't want to hurt Ray again. In the background of his thoughts the Q'utah cheered him on ... then went silent. Peter's lips touched soft, white skin ... and froze.  
  
"I can't take you," he said wonderingly, backing away. The woman made a soft little sound of protest as he withdrew, blinking her way out of her entrancement. "The Q'utah can't use you. Why?"  
  
"Why ... uh ... what?" she answered, becoming fully aware. "Who are you? What happened?" She got her first good look at Peter, her mouth becoming a large "O" of astonishment. "Who--?"  
  
Peter ignored her, glad she hadn't started to scream. He might have started to scream had he found himself being accosted by a wild-eyed, grime- and-blood encrusted man who smelled of the sewers. For the Q'utah the woman ceased to exist. They grumbled to themselves, forcing Peter's legs to carry them to safety. "Why couldn't I take her?" Peter asked aloud, ignoring the strange look this got him from a passing muscleman in a flannel shirt.  
  
The low mumbling ceased, growing into clear speech. "This is all the boy's fault," one growled in the back of his thoughts. "We should have made sure to have finished him off. Now we are bound."  
  
The boy? Did they mean Ray? "What are you talking about?" Peter slowed his stride now that the woman had been left far behind. "What does this have to do with Ray?"  
  
"The boy has bound us," the Q'utah returned angrily. "It is a blood oath even we cannot break."  
  
"We must return to him now," another put in, no less furious at this turn of events. "We are bound."  
  
Blood oath? Peter bit his lip, concentrating furiously on this cryptic statement. Vaguely the memories drifted back to the pre-dawn hours. Blood oath. He remembered a promise Ray had coerced from him in his moment of madness.  
  
"Promise me, Peter," Ray's voice begged from far away. "Promise that you'll always come back to me for blood rather than touch anyone else."  
  
Peter had sworn even as he'd drawn first blood. A blood oath. The combination must have been binding on such interdimensional creatures even as Stantz had suspected. Peter admired the younger man's cool-headedness. A neat trap, kid, he applauded, bringing his hands together twice.  
  
Come back to me. Back to Ray. If he was still alive.  
  
Clarified, the pull grew directional. Peter was no longer drawn to personalities along the way. His steps turned of their own accord to the west, some sixth sense telling him that that was the direction Ray Stantz lay. The pull was strong, the temptation great. Ray's touch, Ray's warmth filling his veins, Ray's past flashing behind his closed lids, Ray's....  
  
Ray's life.  
  
Ray was still alive. That was something. But as the Q'utah's chosen target, how long would he remain that way?  
  
*** 


	5. Chapter 5

Winston Zeddemore paced the small private room in constricted arcs, his path taking him around the bed occupying the middle of the floor. Nearly twenty-four hours of wakefulness on top of only a few hours rest the night before had taken their toll on the robust Ghostbuster, reddening his eyes and bowing his shoulders. A quick shower and change of clothes before assuming his shift here had provided only temporary refreshment -- too temporary to have lasted this long.  
  
He interrupted his restive pacing to glance at his watch, brows furrowed. The hands stood at four a.m.; already the sounds of a hospital gearing up for the morning routines penetrated the low-lit refuge. Winston sighed, paced another two steps and again came to a halt. "Never did like waiting," he mumbled, running a hand through his short curls. "It's the waiting that's starting me gray."  
  
Brown eyes narrowed as he examined the room as he had every few minutes since nightfall; it remained comfortingly undisturbed. Still, the black war vet took another turn in place, dark features creased with worry. "Don't know what it is," he continued aloud. "Maybe that last cup'a coffee is making me antsy?" He pursed his lips, his gaze lighting on the still form inhabiting the raised bed: Ray Stantz.  
  
Zeddemore approached the bed, staring down at his friend. Ray lay on his side, right arm stretched out to accommodate the IV needle that was conveying some clear fluid into a puckered vein. Tangled auburn hair haloed a face that was pale but not bluish-gray as it had been the previous dawn. Transfusions, fluids and treatment had restored a blush to his cheeks and eased the labored breathing into easy respiration and undistressed rest.  
  
"Not a good thing, little brother." He rested a hand on the auburn head, gently so as to not wake the sleeper. "If Peter really is coming back for you like you said, I...." He trailed off, focus shifting from Ray's face to the proton pack that waited at the foot of the bed, within Winston's reach at all times. The implication in the man's anguished expression was clear -- Peter would not finish the job he'd begun the night before. Whatever it took.  
  
Zeddemore started, disturbed out of his grim musings when a stocky nurse knocked once on the door and peeked in. "Mr. Zeddemore? There's a telephone call for you. Lieutenant Frump."  
  
Winston hesitated, darting a glance from the woman to Ray and back again. "How far is the phone" he asked her in a low voice. "I don't really want to leave right now."  
  
She jerked a thumb to her left. "Nurses station. Right over there."  
  
Winston bit his lip. "Guess I'd better take it, he might have some news on Peter. Could you stay here a minute, Miss?"  
  
The nurse regretfully shook her head. "Sorry. I'm the only one manning the station right now. Can't leave."  
  
She disappeared even as Zeddemore sighed and turned to the young man on the bed. "Hey," he called softly, shaking Ray's shoulder. "Wake up."  
  
Stantz stirred, then rolled over onto his back to regard the black man blearily. "Wha--? Winston. Is Peter...?"  
  
Winston patted him soothingly. "Nothing's wrong, homeboy. I have to leave the room for a minute to take a phone call from Lieutenant Frump. I want you awake until I get back."  
  
Ray struggled up onto one elbow, apprehension dispelling the sleep in short order. "Lieutenant Frump? Is it about Peter? Did they find him?"  
  
Broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. "That's what I'm going to find out. I hate leaving you alone...."  
  
Stantz dismissed that with a wave. "Go ahead, Winston, Nothing's going to happen in just a few minutes. I'll be all right."  
  
Zeddemore hesitated again, then nodded. "I'll be back in jig time and Egon's due in any minute now. If you see or hear anything weird, let out a yell, got it?"  
  
Ray stretched, a grin curling his lips. "They'll be able to hear me all the way in New Jersey." The grin faded, replaced by worried disquiet. "But if Peter needs me...."  
  
That brought a spark of anger to the older man. He took Ray's shoulders, leaning close until they were nose-to-nose. "I thought we settled this already. Peter needed you last night and you almost died. We're not taking any more chances until Egon's got things worked out. Understand?" Stantz stared back mutely, large eyes wide. Interpreting that as agreement, Winston released him. "Frump is on hold; I'll be right back."  
  
He crossed to the door and disappeared through it leaving a visibly worried engineer behind. Had Winston known what had been impatiently awaiting his departure he might well have let the policeman hold forever.  
  
Ray sat up straighter in bed, rubbing tired eyes, then allowed his fingers to trail down over the bandages swathing his shoulder and throat. "Peter." The name was spoken softly, sadly, even as the amber eyes lost their focus and began to glaze. "Peter," was repeated, this time blankly. Something tapped on the window drawing his attention; he looked, already not completely aware if not entranced, blinking his surprise to see the face of Peter Venkman peeping back at him. "Peter? Is that you?"  
  
The tapping noise came again even as Peter gestured toward the closed pane. Ray slipped over the side of the bed, swaying dizzily as his bare feet touched the floor. He clung to the lowered safety rail for a moment and shut his eyes, taking a deep breath. The renewed tapping brought him around; he staggered to the window, snatching something from the nighttable en route.  
  
"Let me in!" Peter's voice was muffled by the glass but still clear. Ray cocked his head, dazedly following the other's pointing finger to the sash. Obediently, he turned the catch and lifted the window wide, allowing Peter Venkman access.  
  
"Thought he'd never leave," Peter muttered, climbing into the room. "I've been hanging onto that drainpipe for almost an hour."  
  
"Is it really you?" Ray stared wonderingly at the nearly unidentifiable psychologist, from filthy spiked brown hair to sewer-and-blood-damp uniform and slimy boots, his gaze trailing up again to the man's face. Peter was as pale as Ray himself, his green eyes glittering with ruby overtones and filled with so much anguish as to be unbearable to look upon. "You look awful."  
  
A tiny smile appeared and vanished. "You don't look so hot yourself, pal," Peter gibed back, taking in the pale face, long hospital gown and wobbly stance in one sweep. He touched the white bandages on Ray's neck, pulling them off in a single agitated motion; the flesh beneath was fiery colored and swollen, black sutures standing out grotesquely. "Did a pretty good job on you, didn't I?" Stantz didn't answer but Peter cocked his head in a listening attitude, face crumpling with distress. "They want.... I ... almost killed you."  
  
Sympathetic through the growing numbness blanking his own features, Ray reached out to him, wrapping both arms roughly around his neck. "Peter, don't worry. It'll be all right."  
  
Looking surprised at the gesture, Peter nevertheless returned the embrace, locking around Ray's chest and waist as he'd done the previous dawn. "You made me come back here," he growled, eyes now more red than green at the proximity to his prey. "I wanted to take someone else ... didn't want to hurt you again." Ray stiffened at the gruff tone and tried to pull back but Peter's grip was steel, his enhanced muscles easily defeating the younger man's weakened and less-than-fully-aware retreat. "You shouldn't have made me come back to you."  
  
"Peter...." Stantz stopped struggling, his breathing growing faster even as what little color had returned to his face at the other's appearance fled. His legs gave out suddenly, leaving him dangling in Peter's grip; the psychologist lowered them both until they were sitting on the floor.  
  
"I can feel you again," Peter said wonderingly, lifting his head to meet Ray's wide eyes. "You're afraid." The younger man shook his head once but Peter held up a hand, cutting off the protest. "I'm an empath, Ray -- that's how I ... they feed. All we're reading from you right now is ..." He swallowed, the fire in his eyes banking into emerald regret. "... that you're afraid of us ... of me."  
  
Ray stared at the protrusions that were once Peter's own teeth. He shivered and looked away at the same time clapping a hand to his neck. Peter licked his lips. "They ... the Q'utah ... they like it when you're afraid. It tastes ... good." This last was more hiss than vocalism and Ray, sinking deeper into induced stupor, shuddered.  
  
"Not your fault, Peter." This was whispered and absent, yet must have come from the heart considering the young man's surface consciousness was rapidly decaying. "Not...." The normally oft voice was so low as to be barely audible, but it was enough to stop Peter cold.  
  
"No!" Low, intense, the words were as quiet as Ray's yet conveying the anguish of a soul already lost. Peter threw back his head, plea directed ceilingward. "Please. Don't hurt him." And from his own mouth came the guttural answer, "The boy dies by his own blood oath."  
  
"The boy better not be hurt," a new voice snarled from the doorway. Peter snapped his head toward that low baritone, baring his teeth at the sight of Winston Zeddemore's powerful frame blocking the entrance. They regarded each other across the space of a dozen feet, ruby eyes enraged, dark brown filled with pain. "Ray told us what happened," Winston went on in a quiet voice. "Pete, are you still in there?"  
  
Venkman hesitated then nodded slowly. "I-I'm here, Winston," he managed, obviously having to fight to get the words out. Very gently he deposited Ray on the floor and gained his feet, hands spread in supplication. "Help ... him. Stop me."  
  
Winston clenched his jaw. "I'll do my best, buddy." In a sudden motion he made a dive for the bed and the proton pack sitting there. Peter, however, was faster by far. In a single bound he'd crossed the intervening space and snatched up the pack, tearing it out of Zeddemore's grasp and heaving it against the far wall.  
  
"You won't stop us," he spat, circling the bed to get at the defiant negro. "We will have him then we will be free."  
  
"Not us," Winston said, backing away and raising both hands placatingly. "Peter. Peter Venkman. I know you're there. Fight them!"  
  
But the psychologist only continued to advance. "He has fought us long enough!" he said in guttural tones, balling his fist. Winston, no tyro to battle strategy, got there first, his haymaker right cross snapping Peter's head back and nearly knocking him to the ground. Peter, however, was unstoppable. The psychologist recovered before the black could set up a second blow, his own backhand sending Zeddemore clear over the bed to crash into the concrete outer wall. Winston landed with a "Whuff!" of escaping air; he didn't get back up.  
  
Peter watched him narrowly for a full minute before dismissing the incident and returning to the huddled engineer. Completely unaware now, Ray half- sat, half-lay against the wall beneath the window, his head thrown back and the swollen skin on his throat fully exposed. At the sight, the ruby obliterated emerald in his eyes, the fires of madness blazing anew. With exquisite care Peter gathered the young man up, cradling him in one arm, and using his free hand to stroked the unshaven cheek in a curiously gentle gesture that was entirely Peter Venkman. One emotion after another chased itself across his lean features, driven under an empathic impact a millennium old. Joy and affection trailed loneliness and grief, feelings and sensations from without fueling the life force that now animated his body.  
  
"Ours," he chanted, parting his lips; the fangs gleamed whitely in the light. "Boy. Farm. Parents. Death. The prey is ours. Mine." Ray sighed brokenly and a single beam of sanity intruded long enough for Peter to say, "I'm sorry," then his mouth descended brutally on the unprotected throat, razor fangs ripping through stitches and damaged flesh. Blood spurted, flowing freely, and Peter closed his eyes as the Q'utah began to feed.  
  
Lost in the psionic feed, Peter's lips curled in blissful ecstasy, strength almost visibly returning to his body. Ray whimpered once and then was silent, eyes fixed vacantly as his life's blood coursed away. Several minutes passed -- long enough for Peter's cheeks to grow rosy and Ray's ashen, while a scarlet puddle formed around them both.  
  
It was sound that disturbed them, a harsh buzzing noise that violated the quiet tomb in which they were interred. Startled, Peter jerked upright, nearly spilling Ray onto the tiles then catching himself in time. He peered around perplexed, gaze finally lighting on Ray's loosely closed right hand. Peter opened the fingers and lifted the offending object into view.  
  
"An alarm watch!" he exclaimed, astonished out of the blood frenzy. "Smart kid!" He shook his head, eyes clearing, next statement directed internally. "Sorry, slimeballs, you had your shot. Peter's back now!" Tightening his fist eliminated the rude noise -- and, incidentally, the watch. Peter let the fragments drop unheeded, then shifted his attention to the inert figure he clutched in his left arm, the fear this time, generated within. Tenderly he touched Ray's hair, grimacing at the blood still soaking the cotton hospital gown and Peter's own uniform. "Don't trust me now, do you?" he asked bitterly, having to blink away sudden tears. "With good reason."  
  
Once again surprised out of inattention by a noise from the door, Peter glanced up, this time meeting anguished blue eyes behind red framed glass. Egon stepped all the way into the room, glancing nervously from the out-of- range proton pack to Winston's unmoving form, returning warily to the sight of Peter, seated on the hard tiles and holding an unconscious Ray in one arm. "Are they dead?"  
  
"Egon." Venkman caught his breath, self-consciously swiping at his blood- smeared mouth with his sleeve, staring at the physicist with a mixture of misery and acute shame. "I-I didn't know you were.... Egon, I--"  
  
Spengler's suspicion decreased at those stumbling words. Uttering a soft groan, he dropped to his knees and encircled the crouched psychologist with both arms, the hug brief and hard. "We're going to help you, Peter," he said bracingly but with a hint of tears in his voice. "Don't be afraid."  
  
Peter's breath caught in a sob. "They won't let you help me. They're getting stronger. They'll make me kill you all." His voice changed, losing all humanity. "Kill you all!" he threatened before dissolving into another sob.  
  
Egon recoiled from that hate filled croak then neared the man again, laying one long fingered hand against his neck and squeezing. "No, you won't," he returned softly, trailing his fingers over the rising bruise on Peter's jaw. He glanced down at the unconscious Stantz and the sluggishly seeping neck wound. "Let's take care of Ray then we'll handle the entity."  
  
A low moan drew his attention from Stantz to the far corner of the room where Winston was painfully raising his head. Dully the black Ghostbuster propped himself on one elbow, rubbing the back of his head with the other hand. "Wha' hit me?" he wondered aloud, finally clarifying on the tableau by the window. "Oh, my...."  
  
Peter sobbed again, then caught himself, visibly forcing himself away from impending hysteria to meet Winston's eyes. "I-I'm sorry, Winston. Didn't mean to hurt you." He glanced down. "I didn't take much this time," he quavered, lifting Ray a little higher in his arm. "I didn't kill him ... no thanks to me. ... He-he's afraid of me."  
  
Egon listened to this disjointed explanation with a worried frown, touching Ray's cheek gently. "He hasn't lost too much blood yet; looks like you missed the jugular. Why is he unconscious already?"  
  
"T-trance to keep ... him quiet." Peter swiped at his eyes again, then came to his feet sweeping Ray up with him. The motion was so effortless that Egon raised one brow. "My system is enhanced in some way," he explained, crossing to the bed and depositing Ray on top of the sheets. "Muscles, dental work...." He parted his lips, embarrassedly offering the physicist a view of the elongated canines. "... some ... some psionics." He laid one hand on Ray's hair, using the other to wipe his own face, a pained spasm crossing his drawn features. "They ... the Q'utah ... don't want me to tell you ... but ... I can hold on for awhile yet."  
  
Egon pressed the call button for a nurse, then knelt by Winston and tilted his head up. "Are you all right?"  
  
The black man shook his head groggily, while carefully probing a lump on the back of his head. "Dizzy," he muttered, allowing Spengler to help him to a chair in the corner. "Can't seem to concentrate."  
  
Spengler patted one powerful shoulder. "Possible concussion. Remain here until a doctor looks you over." At Winston's half-nod, he crossed back to the bed, where Peter stood looking down at Ray's pale face. The youngest Ghostbuster was beginning to come around slowly, brown lashes fluttering.  
  
Peter gulped when the dulled eyes sharpened, focussing on him as a matter of course. "How ... are you feeling, kid?" he asked trepidatiously.  
  
Ray blinked once, his eyes going wide with fear. Clapping a hand to his neck, he struggled to the opposite side of the bed, a cry of alarm escaping his lips. "No!"  
  
Peter recoiled as if he'd been slapped even as Egon reached the young man. "It's all right, Raymond," the blond reassured forcibly laying Stantz back down. "You're safe."  
  
Ray fought him, batting away the restraining hands with desperation. "Peter--!"  
  
"Peter won't hurt you." That calm, deep bass had the desired effect. Ray relaxed, large eyes darting fearfully from the blond to Venkman, who had retreated to the far corner.  
  
The door opened then and a nurse entered, gaping upon catching sight of the reopened wound on Ray, and Winston's gray face. "What happened here?" she gasped, gaining the bed and taking in Stantz' condition in one experienced sweep.  
  
"He's not bleeding too badly," Spengler replied, ignoring the question. "But you'd better get a doctor. And one for Winston -- we think he might have a concussion."  
  
She glanced in Zeddemore's direction then Peter's, her nostrils flaring at the pungent sewer smells that permeated the room. Asking no further questions, however, she headed back for the hallway, and the public address system.  
  
Egon waited until she'd gone, then patted Ray soothingly. "Don't be afraid, Raymond. You're going to be fine." Stantz said nothing, nor did he remove his gaze from Peter's turned back. Egon sighed and patted him again, then left the bed to join the psychologist in his corner. "He'll be fine, Peter," he repeated the encouragement, resting both hands on Peter's slumped shoulders. "You didn't do much damage." He turned Peter firmly, replacing his hands to hold the psychologist in place. "Don't reproach yourself."  
  
"Don't reproach myself?" Peter repeated incredulously. "I nearly kill Ray and Winston and you tell me not to reproach myself?" Ruby again gleamed in the green eyes as his gaze fell upon Egon's adam's apple, visible over the top of the blue uniform. "It could have been you. It will be you next."  
  
But this time Egon did not withdraw from the threat. Rather, he trustingly pulled Peter close, wrapping him in both arms. "It's not your fault, my friend."  
  
Peter resisted for a single moment then collapsed against the taller physicist, hanging on for all he was worth. "I can't help it!" he blurted, tears again beginning to fall. "I can't help what they're making me do!"  
  
Egon ran a hand down Peter's back, grimacing slightly as Peter's amplified musculature took away his breath. "It's the Q'utah that are forcing your body to attack us," he said, not pulling away. "No one blames you."  
  
Peter rested his head on Spengler's shoulder as though it were too heavy for him to hold it up. "Ray does." Moving only his eyes he glanced over at the huddled engineer, who had not ceased watching him alarmedly. "Look at him."  
  
Two doctors burst through the door, ignored Peter and Egon and traversing the room to Ray and Winston. Egon moved the two out of their way without loosening his hold on Peter one iota. "Ray's not thinking clearly yet," he said when they'd reached a new position by the window. "When he's able, he'll understand it was the Q'utah's doing. They're the enemy, not you."  
  
"They're the enemy," Peter parroted hopefully, adding almost inconsequentially, "It's nearly dawn." He buried his head in Egon's shoulder. "Get Ray out of here -- out of town! So long as he's alive I can't take anyone else -- I have to come back to him until he's dead." He snagged two fistfuls of blue coverall, twisting them desperately. "Don't let him get hurt again, Egon. Kill me if you have to."  
  
Egon gave him another squeeze then stepped back, facing the pleadingg eyes directly. "You know I won't let anything happen to Ray."  
  
Peter sighed and bowed his head, immensely relieved. "If he's all right I ... don't feel too bad. Besides, if I can't take anyone else I think ... maybe I'll ... die soon."  
  
Egon swallowed loudly, giving the psychologist a little shake. "That's not going to happen either, Peter. And Ray is not going to leave town. We're going to go back to the firehouse as soon as he is released this afternoon."  
  
That won a startled gape. "You don't understand! I have to come back for him until he's dead! There's no choice."  
  
Egon essayed a small smile. "Trust me, Peter."  
  
Peter stared back, then slowly nodded. "I ... do trust you." He swallowed and returned to the window. "I have to go." He took one look at the five story drop and rickety drainpipe he'd been clinging to and shook his head. "Elevator," he decided, heading back to the door. "Can't turn into a bat. Bummer." He took a last look at Ray then Winston, both of whom were now surrounded by a small medical team. "Tell them I'm sorry."  
  
"Tell them yourself," Egon shot back with a stout nod, "tomorrow night."  
  
*** 


	6. Chapter 6

The day which followed was nearly a carbon copy of the first. Peter returned to his sewer world, safe from the ravages of the sun. He crawled into a small cul-de-sac not far from the firehouse and collapsed there, depleted in body and exhausted in spirit. He dozed fitfully, sleep interrupted by disturbing dreams in which he killed his friends repeatedly and in the most macabre ways possible. He would start awake, tears on his face, only to hear the dry laughter of the Q'utah enjoying his torment. They hungered still; Peter's truncated feeding had been enough to sustain but not satisfy, and for this they blamed Peter, taking out their discontent by invoking disturbing visions and wave after wave physical pain.  
  
Gone was any claim to his own actions; whatever defiance he'd been able to show previously was now reduced to impotent protests the Q'utah barely recognized. This was demonstrated early after the return underground. Infuriated by Ray's survival, the Q'utah had forced Peter to repeatedly dunk his own head under the waste-charged waters, then to humiliate himself in ways that would have broken a lesser man. The lessons were effective and Peter Venkman's spirits sank lower, more so as he sensed portions of his personality begin to submerge beneath the encroaching evil that was the Q'utah.  
  
The aliens might have already won completely -- would have won -- had their victim been any other. But Peter carried a shield comprised of hatred and bonded by all-consuming rage. Anger had always been Peter's strength, and anger he now nourished, using it to fuel the burning pit that had once been his heart. He was not their's yet. Not yet.  
  
Despite the misery there was some measure of comfort to be found. Ray still lived. The morning before, Peter had not been sure. Pleasure at his friend's survival was tainted but not destroyed by the remembrance of his last empathic contact with the younger man. The fear spice had been strong -- stronger than either love or trust in all but the memories. Not that the mind touch had not been wonderful! Peter smiled, re-savoring the experience. Rather than childhood, last night Peter had re-lived some of their ... of Ray's experiences at Columbia, many of them long forgotten or never known, and from a point of view refreshing by an innocence Peter had lost long ago. As before, Peter dwelled on the psychological intimacy they'd experienced, allowing it to ease some of the constrictions around his heart.  
  
It would have been nice, Peter thought regretfully, if Ray hadn't been so afraid. The terror had been stimulating during the delirium of the feed; the memory was a stabbing ache. The affectionate trust Peter had once cherished was still there, and for that Peter was glad. But this time as strong as the love had been, was something Peter had only sampled the first time: an overpowering fear that bordered on the very fringe of hysteria. Peter's protective instincts rebelled at allowing his Ray to suffer like that, even while his heart broke to realize that he himself was the cause. Ray was afraid of him -- more afraid than he'd ever been. The Q'utah had seen to that, stimulating the emotion for their own pleasure. Even were the Q'utah to be destroyed and Peter restored, would his relationship with Ray ever be the same? Not that the chances of Ray actually surviving their inevitable next encounter weren't admittedly slim.  
  
The second beam of symbolic sunlight was that Egon was now aware of the situation. As ashamed as Peter had been to have the blond physicist see him at the hospital, just that much had he been he comforted. Egon had said to trust him and Peter did more than he'd ever trusted anyone in his life. But could even the imposing Egon Spengler defeat an enemy a millennium old ... and could Peter survive the battle? As a murderer of old men and young friends, did he even want to?  
  
Peter shook himself out of that thought. Of course he wanted to survive; whatever had happened these past two days could be faced and worked out ... eventually. Maybe. He hoped. Right now all he chose to concentrate on was revenge ... defeating the Q'utah and exacting payment for what they'd made him do to Ray ... for what they had done to Peter. Absently he flexed his right arm, watching the muscle bulge at the bicep, though no more than it had done last week; less, in fact, since dehydration and lack of food was beginning to take a toll. Still he felt the strange energy coursing through his system, enhancing his strength and speed, keeping him moving when he should have long ago collapsed. How could he be so weak and yet so strong all at once?  
  
Confused, he clapped both hands to his forehead, bowing forward. "Egon," he groaned aloud. "Egon, please...."  
  
"We will force you to kill your precious Egon," a hated voice trilled, "and we will feed on his thoughts."  
  
"You will pay for the blood oath," another harped, rattling Peter's nerves with a jolt of pain. "Kill the boy, kill the other. Your friends all die."  
  
"They'll defeat you," Peter shot back in a now-rare burst of contempt. "Egon...."  
  
"Egon is already dead," the first returned snidely. "You are already dead."  
  
Whatever reply Peter would have made -- could he have formulated a suitable one to that ominous remark -- was lost in the last entity's announcement.  
  
"Night."  
  
Peter's empathics shifted into high gear -- more intensely than he'd ever felt them save when feeding. A vision of Ray slammed into his mind, proximity strengthening the vision even more. He sensed rather than saw the young man very clearly, felt him shiver with dampness and fear, and knew beyond knowledge that Ray was seated in the basement of the firehouse.  
  
"So close."  
  
"No," Peter whispered, again covering his face. "They can't be ready yet. Please no more." The answer to this heartfelt plea was for his body to unfold from its uncomfortable crouch and scurry along the narrow passage to the nearest ladder. He emerged into the cool night air, tears on his face and gloom in his heart.  
  
Dragging steps covered the one city block to Mott Street in short order. He pressed himself flat against the building opposite the great brick structure that he'd called home for several years, examining it with longing and dread. Home. This was his home and he wanted nothing so much as to crawl inside its secure walls, slip between clean sheets -- barring Slimer's nocturnal visitations -- and give himself over to the exhaustion that was claiming his soul if not his body.  
  
No lights shone in the lower windows and Peter crossed the street, resigned now to whatever fate awaited him inside. He sensed Ray even stronger now; the younger man had not changed position; the basement was still Peter's goal. He could only hope that there were adequate protections for his friend even if it meant the end of Peter's existence ... and the Q'utah's.  
  
As expected, the outer door was locked. This proved to be no barrier to one whose strength was enhanced many times over. A slight exertion snapped the lock, allowing Peter access to the dim interior of the garage area. There his night vision proved to be another boon -- he could see as well as if it were day. Not that I really want to see what happens next, he told himself gloomily. Egon! Where are you?  
  
Dragging steps carried him to the stairway leading down to the basement- subbasement combination. Down there, he knew, huddled twenty-five feet below, Ray Stantz waited. Even from here the smell of Ray's ... fear? anxiety? ... was intoxicating. Subliminal warnings made him pause outside the metal firedoor, peeking around it rather than entering boldly. There were four life forms below. Not that that was surprising; Egon, Winston and Slimer would not have left Ray to face him alone.  
  
"Four below," the parasite Q'utah growled, as empathically aware through Peter's senses as was Peter himself. "Four not one. Three and a not- human."  
  
From where he stood Peter could see Ray quite clearly despite the dimness of the basement area. The engineer sat on a high stool three-quarters of the way across the floor, facing the stairway down which Peter peered. White bandages shone in the light of the single overhead bulb, and Ray raised a hand to touch the dressing guardedly. Though dressed warmly in jeans and red flannel shirt, he shivered slightly in the damp. Afraid, Peter thought sadly. Ray doesn't trust me anymore. There was none of the panic of the previous night, however, and the fear was tightly reined. Peter felt an element of pride in that fact; whatever else might be said about him, Ray Stantz' courage was deep cored and genuine.  
  
Senses expanded even as this appreciative thought filled his heart, and he was able to identify the hidden forms. Winston's familiar essence was flattened against the containment unit, grim determination radiating as a purple-salty aura. At his side hovered Slimer, excited and chattery though silent. To Peter's right he sensed Egon Spengler, crouched behind a work bench, emotions so coolly controlled as to barely register, yet unmstakable. From him Peter discerned high concern outwardly directed, and resolute competence. Suddenly, Peter felt better than he had in two days.  
  
The Q'utah made no move and Peter felt scorn rise with a fledgling confidence. "What's the matter?" he taunted in a low voice, his heart beating like a triphammer. "Are you afraid they might be able to stop you?"  
  
Their answer came in the form of another burst of pain, so excruciating as to nearly knock Peter to his knees. "Afraid of nothing!" the entity shrilled silently. "A millennium men have tried to stop us."  
  
"Not to mention," Peter growled back, regaining his balance, "that the only other option is starvation in short order. Trap or not, you don't have any choice, boobies."  
  
"We will feed upon four this night."  
  
"Hope you choke," Peter snapped, his feet descending the steep stair of their own volition. Craving grew, the deep seated hunger flaring like a new sun. Ray looked up as he approached, the expression in his large eyes enough to deepen the ache. "I'd hoped you were going to leave town, kiddo," Peter said, afraid himself.  
  
Ray caught his breath, gaze rivetted on Peter's gleaming canines. "Whatever happens, Peter," he managed, breathless but unpanicked, "I don't blame you."  
  
That brought the psychologist to a brief stop. "I love you too, Ray," he whispered, the warmth in Ray's mind flooding him unexpectedly. "And I'm sorry." Louder, "Know you're here, guys. Hard to hide from an empath."  
  
Neither Winston nor Egon responded to his hale though Ray's eyes darted in either direction as though seeking them out. Peter shook his head even as the Q'utah urged him to advance. Ray staggered to his feet but did not retreat as expected. Instead, he merely crossed his arms across his chest in a defensive gesture and held his stance. "You had to come back to me, Peter," he said with a defiance directed at Peter's captors. "They must be pretty hungry by now."  
  
"We are ravenous," Peter replied, mentally berating himself for the 'we.' It was true -- he was as hungry as the Q'utah and for the same sustenance. Could the feed be an addiction? But this was Ray! Collecting himself, Peter took a step backward. "No! Ray, I.... I'm not going to hurt you!"  
  
"You will feed!" the Q'utah ordered, battling for control of Peter's body. Venkman clamped his mind in a knot, focussing on love, compassion, friendship. "N-no...."  
  
"Peter."  
  
That soft voice drew Venkman back around to his prey. Ray's amber eyes gleamed softly in the light, affection there mixed with suppressed fear. "You have no choice, Peter," he declared, taking a single step forward. "You have to take my ... me."  
  
"They can't stop us," Peter blurted, wondering when the Q'utah-Venkman combination had become 'us.' "Egon ... Winston ... I'll just kill them if they try." Another iron effort forced his steps backward again toward the stair. "No matter what happens ..." He swallowed. "... I don't want you hurt again."  
  
Ray licked his lips though moving no closer. "You don't have a choice, Peter. Look!" In an abrupt move he ripped off the white bandages swathing his throat. Peter could see the red, swollen flesh held together by dark sutures. Something inside of him felt sick, then even that was submerged when the Q'utah went mad! Hunger fanned to unbearable heights, blocking out love and protectiveness; Peter saw only prey. Unable to stop himself, he abandoned his arduous flight, gathered his legs under him and leaped for the stationary younger man. He made it. The Q'utah did not.  
  
There was no warning. The first hint of a trap came with the blinding curtain that cascaded up from the floor to form a barrier between himself and Ray. In mid-air and unable to change direction, Peter had time only to raise an arm to protect his eyes and then he was engulfed in flame. Molten lava dripped from every nerve, synapses seemed to short-circuit all at once. It felt as though he hung suspended for hours though the light impeded his forward speed not at all. The scream was torn from Peter's lips even as something was torn from his mind, the pain so intense that he barely registered crashing into Ray's chest. They both flew several feet and went down, landing hard on the concrete floor.  
  
Only marginally conscious, Peter could see little of his surroundings, yet even through his growing haze another sun burst, this time from the direction of the containment unit. He felt the unpleasant suction of directed energy even as arms wrapped around his middle, preventing him from being dragged along. Unearthly screams filled the room, uttered in three separate voices, all of them recognizable and abhored. Sixty seconds later the glare was gone, the room silent and Peter Venkman's mind was his own.  
  
Sheer relief must have blacked him out for a few seconds for the next thing Peter was aware of, was that he was lying on top of something somewhat softer than the concrete floor, still held tight around the middle. Thundering feet approached, hands touching him gently on the back and head.  
  
"Peter?" Egon's deep bass inquired, more anxiety in the tones than had been apparent in Peter's brief empathic scan. "Peter, speak to me."  
  
"Is he all right?" Winston demanded from some point directly overhead. "What about Ray?"  
  
"Peeee-ter!" That was Slimer's high falsetto, even as something squishy kissed his cheek. Peter sighed in pure contentment, exhaustion precluding his moving for a moment. I'm free! I'm free! I'm.... Hey! What about Ray? Alarmed, Peter forced his head up, until he could see his 'cushion.' A pair of worried eyes stared back from a distance of six inches, dark against a pale face.  
  
"P-Peter?" Ray whispered. Emotions Peter declined to identify crossed the youthful face, even as the arms holding him in place tightened briefly before dropping away. "I-is that really you?"  
  
"Ray?" Venkman croaked back. He propped himself up onto one elbow and rolled off the man he was still lying on. The effort was horrendous and nearly cost him his thready consciousness, but he held on tenaciously, worry coercing his vision back into focus. "Are you...?"  
  
"Are you?" Ray shot back, weakly lifting one hand and touching the ugly stitches on his neck. His eyes never left Peter's, and there was a wariness there that returned the bile to the psychologist's mouth.  
  
Peter managed a nod even as strong arms slid around him from behind and turned him over. Egon Spengler lifted him to a sitting position, bracing him with an arm around his back. Peter reluctantly raised his head, loathe to see the condemnation and disgust he expected to find in Spengler's eyes. To his surprise he found only concern in the sapphire depths. Even as Peter watched, the concern softened into intense relief. "It is you, isn't it, Peter." Was that a hint of tears in the resonant bass?  
  
Peter sank backwards, Egon's arms providing a support that would have left him flat if it had been removed. His mind swirled, everything going light, dark and blank by turns. "Is it?" he mumbled, taking rapid mental stock of himself. The background pressure and voices that had been part of every waking or sleeping moment for the past two days were gone, the relief so intense as to leave Peter shaking. "They're ... gone," he managed through lax lips. "The Q'utah. They're...."  
  
"Gone, Peter." Egon confirmed, using his other hand to cradle Peter's head. "We activated the emergency lock in the containment unit the minute you were clear. Activating it siphoned the Q'utah directly into the energy grid."  
  
"Siphoned how?" Peter wondered, only mildly curious. If Egon said they were siphoned, that was good enough for him!  
  
Winston answered from the left. "That info you came through with paid off, homeboy. Ray remembered what you said about the Q'utah being N-Es, so we planned our strategy accordingly. Egon set a barrier field of protonic energy attuned to let only your psionic frequency pass. As you went through, it filtered out any strange wavelengths as neat as putting you through a colander."  
  
Peter grinned, having to force his eyes back open even as the quiet blackness beckoned. As his lashes lifted he was treated to a view of Egon's blue uniform with one eye and the still supine Ray Stantz with the other. He tilted his head slightly, watching as Winston slid an arm under the younger man's shoulders and lifted, bracing Stantz much as Egon was him.  
  
"Is it really him?" Ray blurted shakily, continuing to watch Peter as though the psychologist were going to spring at any minute. "Peter, is it really you?"  
  
"'Course it is, you dope," Peter returned, striving for a light tone. The quaver in his voice gave him away, and he struggled to sit on his own, feeling lost and vulnerable. Egon refused to release him completely, however, and for that Peter was grateful. "Ray ... I'm...."  
  
The youngest Ghostbuster didn't reply, though his focus shifted to Peter's mouth. It was only then that Peter realized that the inch long razor canines were still there. Appalled, he tapped one of them with a fingernail, questioning Spengler with a look while wondering if his eyes were at least green again.  
  
One long forefinger pried open Peter's mouth, tapping a fang in turn. "Obviously, not all the modifications done to your body were psionic enhancements. Whether these physical alterations are permanent or not...." The blond head shook apologetically.  
  
The answer to that came precisely on cue. Peter coughed and spat, ejecting two white objects from his mouth. Slimer zipped to ground level, extending one sticky hand before they hit. An odd look on his face, he held them up for public view. "What?" he asked, floating at shoulder level.  
  
Peter ran his tongue along the dual holes in his gums. "My $900 caps!" he wailed, clamping his mouth shut and feeling like one of the Beverly Hillbillies.  
  
Egon gave a short bark of laughter at his discomfiture, as much a release of tension as humor. "We'll replace your winning smile tomorrow," he soothed, slinging an arm around Peter's chest and urging him up. "I'm betting you'll want to spend some time at the dinner table first. Those ... uh ... were root canals, weren't they? If not, we'll have to find you a straw."  
  
After three days, food sounded pretty good, root canal or not. The body screamed its need even though Peter felt nauseated by the thought. He spat again, tasting the salt of human blood on his tongue, while his stomach tied itself into a knot. "A straw doesn't sound half bad," he joshed weakly, rubbing the still swollen spot on his jaw where Winston had punched him. The black man looked sheepish.  
  
"Um ... about that shot, Pete...."  
  
"About that concussion, Zed...." Peter returned, reading the man's mind. The two grinned and the matter was forgotten -- as easy as that.  
  
Winston turned and slapped Ray lightly on the chest. "Think you can make it up, kid? Don't want to spend the rest of the night here on the floor, do you?" Ray nodded and the two also staggered to their feet; the four stood there staring at each other for several long seconds, while the tension grew to an almost palpable force. Even Slimer felt it, and circled the quartet, dripping green slime in his wake. Peter shuffled his feet embarrassedly, not knowing what to say. Thanks seemed inadequate, 'I'm sorry,' even more so. He opened his mouth then closed it again, darting a glance at Ray, who was leaning weakly against Winston. The young man was very pale and as weak as Peter himself. He widened his gaze to include Zeddemore, whose eyes gleamed with happiness. That combined with the warm weight of Egon's arm still around his back, was strengthening and reassuring, yet even that didn't loosen his tongue. For one of the few times in his life Peter Venkman found himself bereft of one thing to say.  
  
It was Slimer, surprisingly, who broke the uncomfortable tension by flaring his nostrils dramatically. "Peeee-ew. Yucky! Yucky!"  
  
"Someone is backsliding with their personal hygiene," Egon agreed, freeing one arm and pinching his nose shut. "I may have to fumigate this coverall."  
  
"Ripe is as ripe does, buddy-boy," Winston added, falling in with Egon's obvious attempt at lightening the situation. "You get a shower before dinner. And use lots of soap."  
  
Peter lifted one arm to hear his grimy uniform crackle. "How about lots of Comet," he groaned, turning determinedly away from his armpit. "I need a good scrubbing." He paused, for there was still one member of the team undealt with. His green eyes rose, meeting Ray's brown ones and locking. "You must know I wouldn't hurt you for anything in this world -- or any other."  
  
Ray silently chewed his lip and Peter was again acutely aware of the holes in his gums where razor fangs had resided, the memory of what those fangs had done to his best friend living vividly on the filmscreen of his eyelids. His focus went from the torn flesh on Ray's throat, then up again to the white face and expressively inexpressive eyes that were examining him minutely, lingering on Peter's mouth. Finally, and to Peter's everlasting relief, Ray essayed an earnest smile. "I'm glad you're okay, Peter," he intoned solemnly. "We were worried."  
  
In obvious and heartfelt agreement, Winston, Egon and Slimer engulfed him with hugs from all directions. Peter leaned into them with a blissful sigh then noticed that Ray, despite his usually open affection, was maintaining his distance. Peter held his breath. "Tex?" he whispered, holding out a trembling hand.  
  
Ray hesitated a moment longer, his gaze shifting from Peter's mouth to his eyes. Then the younger man threw himself forward, nearly knocking Peter over with the force of his lunge. "Welcome back, Peter," he murmured, hugging Peter ferociously around the neck. Peter closed his own arms around the younger man's chest and pulled him close, shut his eyes in absolute contentment and finally knew himself to be home.  
  
*** 


	7. Chapter 7

Thanks to the incursion of Gozer the Gozarian in the year 1985, the physical barriers defining the time-space locale known as New York City- present were somewhat less rigid than those governing most of the world. Damaged by the forcible breach, the walls of reality itself would occasionally thin, creating nexus to other dimensions termed the nether- realms. When this happened alien inhabitants of those far-away planes gained access to the great blue planet Earth, New York City in particular. While some few were powerful denizens in their own right, wielding energies unknown in this world, others were relatively harmless irritants driven by some unexplained desire to tease or vandalize. It was these latter which made up the bulk of cases the Ghostbusters handled day after day. This was one of them.  
  
The building had been built in the 1930s as a vote-attracting nod at the hordes of low-income families in depression era New York. It had originally been a sound enough dwelling in a decent neighborhood, but time and neglect had served to erase all of that. The once proud structure consisted now of little more than a gutted shell, holed-through flooring and shaky stairs; in wartime it might have been mistaken for a direct bomb strike. Urban renewal, which had overtaken the neighborhood recently, had mandated this building be condemned and demolished; the six nether-beings who had moved in after the tenants were evicted decided otherwise. The Ghostbusters were there to settle the dispute -- with blasters.  
  
"He's over here! C'mon, guys!" Peter's call rang hollowly, muffled by crumbling walls. The shrillness of the purple N-E with three eyes and no legs sounded clearly, however, its taunts audible from all over the entire floor, "Flesh-head," and "Earth-crawler!" being among the more printable.  
  
"I'll get you, you little slimeball!" Peter hollered, racing after the more- or-less round being at full speed. This vow was followed by a loud, "Whoop!" as his boots encountered the trail of purple slime the creature was leaving behind. His feet skidded out from under him, momentum carrying him forward several yards bottom first. "Yeeeeeow!" he screeched, coming to a stop just shy of a six-foot hole in the floor. Cautiously crawling the last few inches forward, he hitched one eye over the edge -- it was a twelve foot drop to an equally saggy floor. Peter gritted his teeth and backed away.  
  
"Can't catch meeee!" the nether-being jeered, dripping additional slime on Peter's head for good measure.  
  
Sputtering dangerously, Peter scooped goop out of his mouth, gagging at the fetor left behind. Three days in the sewers had left him with an intense hatred of unpleasant smells -- particularly on him. Wrinkling is nose, he retrieved the thrower dropped in his fall and thumbed the power up another notch. "You're toast, slimehead," he growled, taking careful aim. The emerging white-hot beam charred a crater in the ceiling, showering the furious psychologist with moldy plaster. The N-E, unfazed, swooped under the beam, zipped to the other side of the room and thumbed its nose in Peter's direction. Peter fumed, his admittedly unstable temper fraying like an old rag. "You little.... Ray?! Egon?! C'mon!" Peter yelled, again taking aim. "Get your butts in here!"  
  
Pounding boots responded to this summons, the thud-thud preceding Ray Stantz' appearance by mere seconds. "I'm coming, Peter!" he hollered breathlessly, slipping on the same slime that had taken Peter down. He windmilled his arms, barely maintaining his balance, and ended up sliding gracefully into the room looking pleased with himself. "Hey! That was fun!"  
  
"We're not here for fun," Peter snapped, scowling fiercely in the other's direction. All he wanted out of life right now was to go home and shower off this putrid gunk, and Ray was acting like a kid at an amusement park. "Do your job, Stantz."  
  
Ray's budding grin faded as if it had never been. "Sorry," he returned humbly, eyes carefully fixed on the purple creature who was even now holding its sides with laughter. "I'll get him from this side."  
  
Peter nodded curtly, glancing just once in his youngest partner's direction to gauge the angle for his next shot. To his alarm he noticed that Ray was standing perilously close to the large hole in the floor. Who knew how strong those boards were? Declining another shout, he crossed the distance in a double stride and raised his arm, intending to drag the younger man to safety by the scruff of the neck. "Watch i--"  
  
Ray turned, seeing Peter a fraction before his collar could be touched. Brown eyes widened, flying from Peter's hand to his mouth, a panicked expression crossing the youthful features. Uttering a barely audible gasp, Ray stepped backward out of reach, his foot encountering nothing but empty air. With a surprised yelp he toppled, landing on the floor below with a loud thump.  
  
"Ray!" Momentarily startled into immobility, a dozen thoughts flew across Peter's mind, lighting briefly before moving on. The image of Ray's face when he'd seen Peter so close flashed briefly, driving a rusty dagger deep into Peter's chest. It was the sound of Ray hitting that galvanized him into action. He leaped forward, barely avoiding going over himself, and stared down at the sprawled body lying a dozen feet below, his throat constricting at the blood that was beginning to soak the dirty boards around Ray's head.  
  
"Ray, are you all right?" There was no answer to his faltering query and now dread lended itself to Peter's distress. He crawled to the edge of the hole and reversed, scrambling for position until he was hanging onto the rotted boards by his fingertips. From there it was an easy drop to floor level. He knelt beside the still form, unbuckling the heavy proton pack and unzipping the sand-colored uniform. Eyes narrowed, he ran shaking fingers over chest and back, searching for broken bones. As near as he could tell, the head injury seemed to be the worst of it -- potentially more than bad enough. He fished in his pocket for a handkerchief, using the soft cloth to wipe away some of the blood. To his relief he found only a shallow cut on Ray's forehead that was, as such cuts are wont to do, bleeding copiously.  
  
"Ray, you in there?" Peter haled softly, slapping one smooth-shaven cheek firmly. Brown lashes fluttered and slowly rose; obviously, Ray had just had the wind knocked out of him. Torn between shaking the younger man until his teeth rattled and hugging him hard, Peter's temper struck out on its own and went into immediate overload.  
  
"What is the matter with you?" he roared, gripping the groggy man by both arms and hauling him into a sitting position. "What'd you think I was going to do, bite you?" Nastily, he bared his teeth, revealing the silver temporary caps in the canine positions. Ray blinked confusedly up at him.  
  
"I-I ... sorry." he stammered, raising one hand and dabbing at the blood running down his cheek. "I.... What happened?"  
  
Annoyingly, this innocent confusion fanned Peter's fury even hotter. "Really stupid," he snapped, giving in to his impulses and shaking Ray roughly. "The gooper escaped, thanks to you. We chase the thing twenty minutes and you have to do something moronic like...."  
  
Ray uttered a low cry, cluthing at his ribs and stammering more bewildered apologies. Peter pressed his lips together to prevent more rebuke from gushing forth and again felt inside the open jumpsuit. "You may have a couple of ribs loose," he grated, teeth clenched. "You could have broken your neck."  
  
Ray braced himself against Peter's bent leg, fixing his gaze on the dirty floor. "I'm sorry."  
  
Disregarding the extended apology, Peter searched Ray's pockets, coming up with a small packet of Kleenex. "Here," he gritted, shoving two of the tissues into Ray's hand and taking the rest for himself. "Clean yourself up." Stantz dabbed at his bloody face while Peter pressed the rest of the wad against the cut, tangling the fingers of his other hand in the auburn hair to secure the hold. "Any double vision?" he rapped, using his grip to force Ray's head up. "Dizziness? Nausea?" He received Ray's protestations with an absent nod and leaned forward to study the brown eyes for himself, seeing nothing amiss. "I don't think you have a concussion. You weren't out very long."  
  
"I'm fine," Stantz mumbled, working his fingers under Peter's and holding the tissues in place. He still wouldn't look up.  
  
Venkman felt a particle of remorse at the harsh way he was treating his injured comrade. But Peter's temper was too shredded to allow the gentleness he usually showed to the sensitive younger man, and Ray's lack of trust in him hurt too much to bear. Without a word he unceremoniously hauled Ray to his feet then staggered when the engineer uttered another cry, his leg giving out under him.  
  
Peter braced himself, drawing Ray's arm across his shoulders and slipping his own arm around the younger man's waist. "Ankle?" Stantz pale face made the ensuing nod almost unnecessary. Peter sighed. "Looks like we bust with one short for awhile."  
  
"I'm sorry," Ray repeated miserably, hanging his head. "I didn't mean it."  
  
"Sure you didn't." Peter half-supported, half-carried the other toward the rickety stairway in the corner from which they could exit the building. He was starting to calm a bit, though resentment sang in each vein. The cause of the accident was all too clear to him -- he'd seen Ray staring at his mouth, noticed the fear in the amber eyes -- fear of Peter Venkman. Ray was still afraid of him and it hurt. Movement caught his attention peripherally and he looked up to see Egon and Winston peering down at them; Ray's yell must have brought them running.  
  
"What happened?" Egon demanded, studying them both closely. "Raymond, are you hurt?"  
  
Ray waved his free hand, eyes bright with shame. "I messed up, Egon. We lost the last gooper."  
  
"Never mind that." Winston circled the hole, cautiously testing each board before he stepped on it. "Are you okay? Pete?"  
  
"It's his ankle," Venkman returned, irritated by so obvious a question. "Get down here and we'll get him to a hospital."  
  
"Very--" Egon stopped abruptly and stepped back out of Peter's view. There was a scrambling sound and muted instructions, then the magnificent glow of two proton streams illuminated the entire open floor. Peter recognized the shrill whistle as belonging to the purple gooper, then he was blinking, trying to adjust to the sudden dimness.  
  
Winston's exultant yell of, "Got him!" told Peter that those two at least had had more success than he and Ray. Supporting Ray's weight, Peter silently made his way to the stairwell and waited for the triumphant twosome. He felt a timid touch on his chest and looked down into the contrite face of his friend.  
  
"I'm sorry," Ray said, letting his hand fall away at Peter's sharp look. "I didn't mean to mess up the bust."  
  
"For someone who didn't mean to, you did a great job," Peter snapped back, unable to help himself. He immediately regretted the words upon seeing the fresh guilt flash in those soft brown eyes. No apology would pass, however, so it was a real relief when Egon and Winston showed up then, Egon combing purple slime out of his hair, Winston grinning and bearing a smoking trap.  
  
"We got it!" Zeddemore announced, holding the trap aloft. "It dive bombed Egon and ran right into my stream!"  
  
"Odoriferous creature, isn't it?" Egon remarked, wrinkling his long nose. "I believe I shall claim the first shower when we get back."  
  
"You may have to fight me for it," Winston remarked heartily, playfully tossing a blob in Peter's direction. When Peter's sour expression turned into a scowl, he darted a worried glance at Stantz. "Hey, you guys really aren't okay, are you? How bad is it?"  
  
"I'm fine," Ray said even as Egon knelt to carefully probe the rapidly swelling ankle. Ray stiffened at the first touch, and Peter could see the blood drain completely from his already pale face. Ray darted a self- conscious glance in his direction, bit his lip and looked away, and Peter felt his own heart sink.  
  
"Look," Peter began, his jaw tighten. "Why don't you guys take Ray to the hospital for some x-rays while I stuff these goopers into containment." He barely stopped himself from reacting to puzzlement from Egon and Winston and the way Ray's shoulders sagged. He didn't care. It had suddenly become imperative that he have some time to himself. Time with no Ghostbusters around.  
  
This plan was spoiled when Winston shot him a cryptic look and proclaimed, "Think I'll head back with you, Pete. You can't carry five traps by yourself."  
  
Accepting the arrangement and not remarking on Peter's grimace, Egon stepped forward and slid an arm around Ray's chest, allowing Peter to withdraw. Good ol' Egon. Knew I could count on you anyway. "We'll drive Ecto-1 to the hospital while you two request transportation from the officers' working crowd control. We'll join you at home shortly."  
  
"I didn't mean to do it, Egon," Ray said, leaning heavily against the blond.  
  
"I've never considered self-impairment to be one of your hobbies, Raymond," Egon teased gently in a way Peter would have under other circumstances. He was glad to see Ray relax fractionally as the friendly tone soothed some of the guilt Peter's accusations had inflicted. But not enough, Spengs, Peter thought with regret as Ray's shoulders continued to sag. You don't have the touch with him.  
  
The problem was, maybe he didn't, either. Not anymore.  
  
***  
  
Winston had assisted in flushing the traps into permanent containment, then disappeared upstairs, much to Venkman's relief. Emotions churned inside Peter's gut, from frustration to outrage to a gentle sorrow closely resembling grief, each more difficult to deal with than the last. Not that these feelings were new; they'd been planted by the Q'utah, germinating in a soil tilled by heartache and watered by regret. Guilt had settled heavily, bearing as its standard the white flag of gauze swaddling Ray Stantz' damaged throat. Though logic dictated that blame be laid at the insubstantial feet of the Q'utah, still Peter accepted a lion's share for himself, as well; he had failed to protect Ray when his friend and brother had needed him most, worse, had become the instrument of near fatality. That Ray had survived was fortuitous and, Peter admitted freely, no thanks to himself; that he had immediately declared his forgiveness of Peter characteristic. Both were welcome -- had Ray died by Peter's own hand, so too would the psychologist, in spirit if not body. Yet, even that provided no oils on the maelstrom that raged inside of Peter's own soul.  
  
Ray doesn't trust me anymore.  
  
Frustration was the worst. Peter paced the garage like a caged panther, from the steel security door Winston had installed after the one time they had been burglarized, back past Janine's desk and into his own office, around and around in a monotonous circuit. Despite determined efforts, his mind insisted on replaying the events of the past week, emotions rising like old bile in the back of his throat. The storm was confused and undirected but foremost in his soul was the alluring desire to retaliate. But what kind of vengeance can one wreck upon a bodiless entity that was even now entrapped in the energy matrices constituting the klein bottles? Can't touch them, he reminded himself bitterly. Over a thousand years of death and torture, and they get off this easy.  
  
"It's not fair!" He punctuated the statement with a vicious kick at the nearest file cabinet, following up with a right cross that would have knocked any sensible human cold. The steel drawer whumpf'd and deformed inward, the green exterior lightly stained with red. Peter grimaced, blowing on his multiply skinned knuckles, and feeling not one whit better. The cold, hard fact was that his natural inclination to turn blame outward wasn't working this time. The Q'utah were very much beyond Peter's reach, and no amount of temper tantrums could change that. He wanted to make them pay and pay dearly for what they'd done to him -- what they'd made him do to Ray ... to them both.  
  
The only other tangible target for his continued pain was an auburn-haired, fresh-faced young man who had once loved Peter with all his heart. This was Ray's fault, too. After all, if Ray hadn't made that offer, Peter wouldn't even now cringe in remembrance every time they were together. If Ray had fled when he'd been given the chance, Peter would not now be crushed under a mountain of culpability. If Ray hadn't stopped believing in him, Peter would have been long rejuvenated by the supportive circle of his friends. If Ray hadn't stopped loving him.... Peter's heart twisted in his chest.  
  
I nearly killed him. Again as he did nearly every waking hour, he tasted the salty copper of Ray's blood, and impulsively spat as he had after his teeth had ripped through vulnerable flesh. Ray's body was warm in his arms, the taste of the fear-spice delicious, the feeling of power over a helpless human being sang its pleasure in Peter's veins ... then died. Shame added its timbres to the song that was Peter's misery, that there could be anything smacking of pleasure in so vile an act.  
  
But it wasn't all bad, he reminded himself for the thousandth time, striving as he had for days to find some semblance of balance in the situation. Not all of it. The empathics were gone but Peter remembered what it had been like to absorb the memories and emotions of the dying man; he felt again that peculiar fusion with another human mind, and savored the intimacy. I was actually part of him for awhile, Peter thought wonderingly.  
  
The memories had begun to fade as soon as empathic contact had been severed, but fragments of the other's history remained with him, tantalizing shadow memories not his own. "So that's what 'Pa' Hanley was like," Peter murmured, a decade-long curiosity at least partially fulfilled. "Just like I imagined, the old sour puss. Reminds me of Old Man Petrewski from Flatbush. He had a face like a pickle, too." Melancholy filled him, as strong as a little boy's loneliness. "We were a lot alike growing up," he told a eight-year old boy who wasn't there. "So empty." For a single moment righteous indignation crowded away the resentment, and Peter again felt that deep-rooted protectiveness that had marked their relationship from the beginning. "I wish I'd known you then, Ray. No one would have ever touched you or put you down if I'd been there."  
  
Tactile sensations flooded back at the trigger, from tired muscles to the thick leather strap cutting into young skin. Peter flinched from its sting and was rewarded with the smell of fresh-mown hay and the sloppy greeting of a pet cow named Lorna. "Lorna?" Peter snorted, amused despite himself. "Not quite as weird a pet as I'd expected, but knowing you, kiddo, there were a lot more where that came from."  
  
Quite without bidding, Peter envisioned another scene -- one from his own past, a wet tongue and soft fur. "Sparky," he breathed, wanting to smile and cry all at once. "Good old dog. Forgot all about you. Shouldn't talk about Lorna, I guess -- pets are all the same no matter what they are."  
  
The visuals were sketchy and fading further day by day; the second-hand emotions were more long-lasting. There had been so much loneliness in the younger man's past -- so much grief -- and the abandonment by his parents had been crushing. Why does that sound familiar? Peter asked himself bitterly, for the father he was missing was of medium height and balding, and considered the holidays 'sucker time' for the marks. We have too much in common, Ray.  
  
But at least Charlie Venkman reappeared at irregular intervals to lavish love and attention on a son who needed him. Ray had never seen his parents again and never would. How could he bear remembering.... Except that Peter suspected Ray didn't allow himself to remember, even if he could. There had always been gaps in their conversation whenever talk had turned to the past. Everyone blocks things out they don't want to remember, the psychologist in him remarked silently. Wonder how much I block out?  
  
But there were other sentiments Ray had to draw upon, pleasant ones, particularly those centering around Peter himself. These remained as clear and fresh as though first absorbed. Peter stopped midpace to lean against Janine's desk, overwhelmed by the two-way rush of affection he'd felt from the moment Ray had offered his own blood for Peter's survival. His faith in Peter had been so strong that even now it made Peter's eyes sting. From the very beginning he trusted me.  
  
"The boy always was a fool," mocked him from every corner of the room.  
  
"Only when it came to trusting me," he answered, his words lost in the stillness of the air. He shut his eyes against the self-accusation and another pattern arose, himself as Ray saw him, first in college: tall, strong featured and intelligent, and with a heart Sir Launcelot might envy. Even I wasn't that perfect, he thought with a wry smile, automatically running fingers through his wavy hair. You'd have thought that image would have tarnished a bit over the years. But it hadn't. The reflections of himself from That night (Peter always thought of it as That night) also rang clear in his thoughts -- too clear. Older perhaps, more human than idol, but there had been no shade of reservation despite Peter's lack of facade. Ray had always accepted him as he was without desire for change, unlike any other person who had ever entered Peter's life.  
  
Teeth slashed through skin and trust died.  
  
And now Ray is afraid of me.  
  
The last reel unfolded across the viewing screen of his closed eyelids and Peter was again himself seeing Ray's face as it had appeared through the hospital window. Dread and outright fear had tamped affection nearly out of existence. He remembered Ray shivering on the bed as far away as he could get, large eyes fixed hysterically on Peter's mouth ... as they had been today.  
  
"Can't blame you too much, kid," Peter whispered, his stomach churning nauseatingly. "How can you believe in someone who gave in so easily -- who didn't try hard enough to stop himself from killing you?" His fists clenched generating a jagged edge of pain from his swollen knuckles that was somehow welcome and no less than he deserved. "Frankly, I think I'm afraid of me, too."  
  
Even Winston and Egon seemed to watch Peter constantly, suspiciously, as though they expected him to snap out again at any minute. Indignation grew, radiating toward all three of his friends. Winston and Egon doubting him hurt as badly as that Ray did. Ray generally stayed out of his way but Winston watched him surreptitiously, whenever he thought Peter wasn't looking; Egon was more open about it, but with a hesitance in his blue eyes as though he wanted to speak but could not find the words. Even Slimer hovered constantly, always nearby if without the usual devoted chatter that usually drove them all crazy. Peter slammed his already abused left fist down onto Janine's desk, barely noticing the fresh blood that spotted a stack of invoices. "I'm not a specimen!" he growled.  
  
Absently he fingered the bruise along his jaw where Winston's haymaker had landed a week earlier. It was mostly faded now, more yellowish than purple, and the swelling was long gone. "I'm surprised he didn't break my jaw," he murmured aloud.  
  
"I tried."  
  
Peter's head snapped up at that half-amused baritone, eyes narrowing as Winston Zeddemore descended the long staircase from the upper levels. "What are you doing here?" he demanded gruffly. "Spying on me?"  
  
Heavy boots thumped on the concrete floor as the black man approached, coming to a stop behind Peter's right shoulder. "Is that what you think?"  
  
Peter bit his lip, dropping his head to study the pile of bloodied paperwork. "I haven't decided to sprout fangs again," he managed over the lump of resentment choking him.  
  
A warm, heavy hand settled on his shoulder, bringing Peter irrationally back to the evening a week distant when Ray had touched him much like Winston was. The empathic flood had been delightful then, but there was no flood now and no delight, nothing but that simple, tactile contact. Once it would have been enough, but Peter's hurts bore too deep now for even Winston's offered friendship to touch.  
  
"I wasn't thinking you would," Zeddemore reproved mildly. "I was hoping you might like to talk." He pulled Peter around, dipping his head until Peter was forced to meet his eyes, to see the sympathy and understanding there. One of the many locks on Peter's heart snicked open, loosening his tongue enough to mumble,  
  
"Nothing to talk about." He pulled back and away, rubbing his sore knuckles. "I'd better go...." Winston grabbed him again, arresting the intended escape; Peter's eyes flashed offense. "Planning on hitting me again?" he snapped, bruised jaw jutting truculently forward, body tensed for combat.  
  
Winston blanked and released him, raising both hands in a placating gesture. "I'm not here to fight, Pete. I'm here because...."  
  
"Why?" Peter demanded, not unclenching his fists.  
  
The older man hesitated. "I thought you could use a friend."  
  
The answer disarmed Peter immediately. He gulped, the anger fleeing in a rush. "Why?" repeated, this time with more perplexity than heat.  
  
"Because I am your friend." The negro wrapped a long arm around Peter's shoulders, pulling him into a tight hug and ignoring Peter's half-hearted attempts at retreat. "You've been sending mixed signals for days, Pete, and I think it's time you talked instead of running."  
  
Running? That was a surprise. Peter Venkman was a social creature, adept at absorbing what emotional support he needed from those around him. Rather than rejecting his friends' approaches, he would seek them out, and they would offer whatever he needed, whether it be a hearing ear, a comforting shoulder or just the consolation of companionship. When there was consolation to be had, that is.  
  
"What do you mean?" he asked stupidly, finding no strength to pull away from the other's tight hold.  
  
He felt Winston examine him thoughtfully, and Peter stove not to squirm under his sharp look. "Ever since that problem with the Q'utah you've stuck up 'No trespassing' signs all over. Look at you now hiding down here instead of upstairs with me or at the hospital with Ray and Egon. That's not like you. Ray's hurt and you're here?" He cluck-clucked disbelievingly. "No way, Jose. Last timed Ray was injured on a bust you were stuck to that boy's side like superglue. We had to use a crowbar to get you to eat and sleep."  
  
Peter shook his head sadly. "That concussion he had in June wasn't my fault."  
  
The answer seemed to surprise Winston as much as it did Peter, who hadn't intended to say anything at all. "What are you talking about, homeboy?"  
  
Venkman took a deep breath and again turned away, his shoulders hunched. He didn't want to see Winston's face when the man realized the full extent of Peter's culpability. "Ray was standing on the edge of that hole -- too close. I was going to drag him back. He turned, saw me and jerked away." He darted a glance up, then immediately away. "Don't you see? He fell because he was more afraid of me than he was of breaking his neck!"  
  
Winston stared and Peter could hear his breathing increase its pace. "That can't be right. Ray's never been afraid of you in his life. Ray loves you like a brother, man."  
  
Well ... he did, anyway. Peter directed his gaze at the top of Janine's untidy desk, finding the unaccusing metal top soothing somehow. Inside, the pangs of loss and isolation grew exponentially deeper the closer they got to the crux of the problem. "I imagine it's a little hard to love a brother who just ripped your throat out. He must wonder if it's going to happen again -- whether I'll ever revert to type. He must know that I ... remember."  
  
"Remember what, Pete?" Winston asked gently, replacing a hand on Peter's shoulder.  
  
"Him." Peter picked up a stapler from the desk, turning it over and over in his hands. It was heavy and cold and made Peter think of the pit of his own stomach. "What it was like. For me it was pleasure with no logic involved; imagine being ravenously hungry and then being offered a full banquet table. I had no control -- none! Even when he was begging me...." A sob rose and he took a deep breath, striving to control his shaking voice. The memory of Ray's pleading was distant, but the intensity of his terror as he lay dying in Peter's arms was sharp as diamond. "He was begging me not to kill him ... and I enjoyed it."  
  
"Peter." The name was whispered softly, then Winston's arm was back across his shoulders and Peter gratefully accepted the comfort he could not deserve. "It wasn't you enjoying it, man, it was them -- the Q'utah. You were as much of a victim as Ray was. Why can't you see that?" Peter felt the muscular body straighten, tightening his hold. "I know you, Pete, and I know for a fact there isn't any way in the world you would ever hurt Ray -- or let anyone else hurt him, either. I've seen you go to bat for that boy too often -- and him for you -- to believe you'd enjoy seeing him actually die."  
  
"Maybe...." The words made sense and echoed what Peter had been telling himself for days. The only problem was that he couldn't accept them, the risks were too great. "Too bad Ray doesn't believe it."  
  
"You can't say that, Pete," Winston protested, giving him a shake. "Ray loves you as much as you love him -- that's so obvious it's almost funny you not believing that. If you'd seen how scared he was for you even after he ended up in the hospital, you wouldn't think that." He paused, continuing in a softer voice, "Egon and I were just as worried for you."  
  
Peter continued to hold the stapler, then placed it down gently on the desk, his fingers cramping around it. "I saw how scared he was of me on the bust today. He looked at me and thought I was going to kill him." Large eyes flying to his mouth where the hated fangs had once been ... fear blanking the youthful face ... Ray falling.... "He thought I was going to hurt him and he flinched away." He stiffened, shoulders coming back, head determinedly coming up. "If he doesn't trust me, there's no way we're going to be able to fight together."  
  
"But...."  
  
Peter raised a peremptory hand. "Don't say it, Zed. The way the three of you have been keeping your distance shows me you think so too. Let's face it, in our business, trust is everything. If the kid is forced to work with someone he doesn't trust, it's going to get him killed, or you, or Egon. Today was proof of that. I'm not willing to risk that ... not with him. Not with any of you."  
  
Silence reigned for a long moment, then Winston, not releasing Peter's shoulders, led him over to Janine's chair and pushed him down. When Venkman made to rise, he leaned forward, using his superior weight to hold the psychologist in place. "I think it's about time you heard me out, Pete. There's a few of the supposedly obvious facts you seem to have missed."  
  
"Like...?"  
  
"Like the reason we've been keeping out of your way." Peter's skepticism must have shown on his face, for Winston shook him again, still not lifting his large hands. "Pete, you seem to be forgetting that the rest of us know what you went through with the Q'utah. Oh, not completely since we can only imagine, but we know you, and how hard it is for you to even come close to losing your identity. None of us have forgotten Watt. There's bound to be some trauma associated with that."  
  
"You sound like me," Peter complained, a reluctant smile tugging at his lips. Maybe Winston had a point. Though he was having trouble objectively identifying the specifics, as a psychologist Peter had expected to face the results of living the better part of two and a half days under slow torture. What he hadn't expected was the effects to gnaw away at him without respite. Had he been subconsciously rebuffing his friends' advances since That night?  
  
Winston smiled back. "I was quoting you. Not a bad deal learning from the best, eh?" His smile faded, leaving him looking older and very tired. "Point being that we knew how bad off you were and wanted to help, but you kept ..." He waved one hand helplessly. "... running away from us. I wasn't kidding about those 'no trespassing' signs, Pete. You made it loud and clear that you didn't want to be bothered -- always going off by yourself, snapping when one of us spoke to you. Your temper has been nonexistent and you're irritable all the time."  
  
"I haven't been that bad?" Peter asked, surprised. He'd known he'd been a little short, but all that?  
  
Winston nodded solemnly. "Worse. Even Egon was thrown for a loop. Finally, he told Ray and me to give you some breathing space. He said that when you were ready, you'd come to us." He paused significantly. "Looks like a bad call on this one. Your stubbornness even extends toward feeling rotten." Another pause. "We wanted to come to you, Pete, but you didn't want us."  
  
Venkman ignored that last. We wanted to come to you. He tasted the phrase again, liking the sound. So he hadn't been abandoned by his friends, after all. Honesty told him that he had been short-tempered of late. He remembered Egon coming to him two nights before, ostensibly for advice but obviously with conversation in mind. Peter winced to remember the sharp words that had passed between them ... from him, he amended, not Egon ... and Egon's withdraw. There had been pain in the blue eyes then, that Peter had not noticed until now. Before Egon it had been Winston, bearing a plate of spaghetti like an shield, also rejected. Poor Ray had hovered silently for days unacknowledged, large brown eyes woeful. "I'm sorry," he blurted, wishing he could say as much to Egon and Ray and resolving to do so later. "I didn't know. I didn't mean to."  
  
Winston's fingers massaged the tight muscles in Peter's shoulders, and Peter found himself relaxing despite himself. "We know that, homeboy. We don't blame you. We knew you were hurting; what hurt us was that we couldn't help. Let us help now."  
  
Peter smiled gratefully up into the dark face. "Thanks. I'll ... try." The offer was so tempting -- so wanted -- that Peter nearly forgot the carefully constructed reasoning behind his earlier decision and the emotion that had prompted it. That blissful state didn't last long. "None of this changes anything. I know what I saw today and I saw Ray nearly die because he was afraid of me." That hurt all over again and he slumped. "We're all of us alive only because we take care of each other in a fight. If Ray won't let me near him, he's going to get killed when things get tough."  
  
"Besides which," Winston added cannily, "not being able to watch out for Ray would pretty much kill you too."  
  
Peter shrugged. Despite Winston's teasing, he'd long ago come to acceptance of that fact. He didn't disrespect Ray's abilities to handle himself; rather, he relied on them, for Ray's strength, speed and sheer determination had delivered Peter from the Reaper more times than he could count. But Ray's enthusiasm often got in the way of his common sense, his impulsiveness leading him to jump the gun in combat and to act before he thought. 'Not that I don't do that myself, Peter admitted wryly, especially when I'm p.o.'d. Then it's Ray that keeps a leash on me! On several levels he'd felt protective of the young man since college and Peter saw no reason to change now. Aren't friends supposed to watch out for each other?  
  
Aloud he said, "No argument there, Zed. I don't like to see the kid hurt. Never have. Doesn't have anything to do with the fact that we all watch out for each other out of necessity." He swallowed hard, forcing the hated words past clenched teeth. "That's why I'm pulling out for awhile to ... give everyone a chance to get back to normal. You can call that Army buddy of yours, Eddie Kobart, to fill in so you won't be short--"  
  
He broke off; Winston's fingers had ceased their massage and were now digging painfully into his arms. "Don't you dare," he stated in cold tones, piercing Peter with a scowl. "We're not going to let you run, Venkman. I'm not about to let you do that to Egon or Ray ... or yourself."  
  
"I never run!" Peter snapped back, anger flaring again. Consciously, he tamped it down, remembering the admonition earlier. "I just think it might be the best thing for everyone involved."  
  
Winston stared at him pityingly. "Putting your own feelings aside, can you sit there and tell me that either Ray or Egon -- or me -- will be better off without you around? Who drags Egon out to live a little whenever he starts thinking like a mushroom? Who keeps Ray from crushing down under the blame he keeps taking on? Or buoys me up when I'm down in the dumps? Have you the slightest idea how involved you are in all our lives?"  
  
Peter opened his mouth to deny the words, then shut it again with a snap. Frankly, he did know and not only as a psychologist. While he admittedly had more than a few personal blind spots, the natural empathy he was blessed with gave him a pretty balanced view of the relationship the four of them shared, and a lack of false modesty allowed him to see the very integral part he himself played in the team, particularly with Egon and Ray. Without him, Egon would have long ago retreated into his fungus studies, becoming starchily stolid and so wrapped up in his scientific pursuits as to forget he had an actual life to lead.  
  
It took very little effort for Peter to conjure up an image of Ray Stantz as he had been back in college. He closed his eyes and saw a boy whose self-image was so battered by childhood abuse and neglect that his sense of worth had been practically zero when he'd joined Egon's math class. It had taken conscious effort and support from Peter to coax that battered spirit into asserting itself; the present day Ray Stantz -- positive and reasonably self-connfident -- was proof of the success of his efforts though the kid was still prone toward accepting blame for things he had no control over. Good thing the kid's buttons are so easy to push; makes it easy to divert that guilt before it hurts him too badly. He stopped. Without Ray's trust, that function had officially come to an end.  
  
Fighting the renewed ache, Peter looked up again into earnest chocolate brown eyes. Winston hadn't been with him as long as the others but he'd become family almost from the day he'd joined. The powerful black man might not have developed with them -- for the other three had grown from boys into men together -- but his warm, caring personality had provided a sound backing that the other three had lacked, and he'd brought the assets of a stable background and the experiences of open combat in Viet Nam to the team. More, of them all Peter and Winston most closely shared a similar history, city street life neither Egon nor Ray could ever fathom. When Winston got out of sorts, affected by the unfairnesses of society, Peter could understand, and invariably knew just how to make him feel better and offer sympathy. The black man returned the favor by being there for Peter whenever the psychologist needed to talk ... such as now. However, there was a more powerful motivator at work here, one Peter could not dismiss lightly.  
  
"I know what you're saying," Peter pronounced carefully, "and I ... appreciate it. But that doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about." He straightened, pushing Zeddemore's hands gently aside and rising to face the man squarely. "We're talking about risking Ray's life in combat, and I think that puts what you're saying in a major different perspective."  
  
Winston backpedaled, raising both hands palm up in a helpless gesture. "At least talk to Ray and Egon first, okay? Don't make a decision like this on your own."  
  
Peter clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll talk to them, not that it's going to be easy." His lips turned downward of their own accord. "It's hard enough to look at the bandages on the kid's throat and remember what I did. It's harder to look into his eyes and know that he's remembering too. But...."  
  
"But you'll do it?" Winston asked with weak hope.  
  
Peter nodded, sorry he was putting his friend through the same anguish he was feeling himself. "First chance I get."  
  
"You're about to get that chance," Winston remarked, cocking his head in a listening attitude. "I hear Ecto coming."  
  
*** 


	8. Chapter 8

The great double doors swung slowly inward, admitting the red-and-white Cadillac hearse to the garage area. It nestled into its roomy berth, the right front fender knocking over a plastic waste bin before coming to a stop. Egon Spengler climbed out from behind the steering wheel, responding to his partners' hoots with a friendly wave. "They rushed us right through," he called, circling the car to the passenger's side rear. "Andy Liebowitz was there visiting a patient, and he cut some of the red tape."  
  
"Everything okay?" Winston left Peter's side and crossed to the car, knocking an empty oil can aside with a little kick. "How you doin', homebrew?"  
  
This last was aimed at Ray, who was struggling to escape the back seat. His tan uniform was gone though he still wore the black t-shirt and light slacks the Ghostbusters routinely used as undergarments. In deference to the chilly day, he'd knotted the sleeves of an old gray sweatshirt Peter kept in Ecto's rear around his shoulders; he pulled it off and tossed it on the seat, then swung his feet out of the car. His left foot was still clad in his work boot; heavy bandaging showed through the black sock he wore on his right. He shot the black man a rueful smile even as Egon pulled him up by the arms. "I'm fine. My ankle is sprained and Andy thinks I cracked a couple of ribs where I landed on my pack ..." He bit his lip when Egon tugged too hard, relaxing a moment later. "... but I think they're just bruised. Nothing serious. Sorry if I was any trouble."  
  
"Happens to the best of us, kiddo," Zeddemore returned, ruffling Ray's hair good naturedly. "Happens to you just a little more often is all. But then, you always did tend to get a bit over-enthusiastic on a bust."  
  
Stantz shrugged self-deprecatingly, the action barely stirring Egon's powerful grip on his bare arm. "Clumsy, you mean. I wasn't watching where I was going."  
  
"That's because you were too busy watching me." Venkman, too, left the reception area to approach the car, sweeping his youngest partner with a glance. Egon slung one of Ray's arms across his shoulders, his own around the other's chest and Peter frowned. He popped his head into the car, glanced around and emerged looking puzzled. "Didn't the hospital send along any crutches?"  
  
Ray pressed his hand against his ribcage and Egon hurriedly repositioned his grip a few inches lower. "They were temporarily unable to supply us with the proper accoutrements," the physicist returned easily. "There will be a pair consigned to us before the afternoon has elapsed."  
  
Winston groaned. "Now I know you're all right, Ray. Egon's pulled out his five dollar words again."  
  
"Indubitably" Spengler returned, smiling.  
  
Peter stood examining Ray for another moment then reached out slowly and tilted his face up. "What about this?" he asked, using his free hand to brush the new dressing on Ray's forehead. "No concussion?"  
  
Ray shook his head, freeing himself from Peter's light hold. "Nope. My ankle might keep me out for a couple days ..."  
  
"Weeks," Egon interjected firmly.  
  
"... but that's it." He looked around, paying particular attention to the ceiling and floor. "Aren't Janine and Slimer back from the orphanage yet?"  
  
Peter stared another second, his fingers trailing down to touch the small gauze patch on Ray's throat. "Not yet. They said about 4:30. I-I have to talk to you." Ray's smile flickered away at his heavy tone, and he purposely lightened it though not without some bitterness. "Don't worry, this isn't an attack. I just want to talk."  
  
Ray blinked, his shoulders drooping slightly at the barely concealed rebuke, but he nodded agreeably enough. "Sure. What do you want to talk about?"  
  
Peter shot a glance first to a sobered Zeddemore then to Egon, whose blond brows were bisected by a puzzled frown. He forced a smile of his own. "You mind, fellahs? Got something I want to discuss with the boy wonder, here." Not waiting for acknowledgement, he slid his arm under Egon's until Stantz was of necessity leaning more on him than on the physicist. Taking the hint, Egon withdrew, leaving Peter to support fully half of Ray's weight.  
  
Winston too stepped back, placing a hand in the small of Egon's back. "C'mon," he offered, "I'm making stew and I need someone to chop onions."  
  
"I hate chopping onions," the blond complained, nevertheless allowing Zeddemore to usher him toward the stairs. "My glasses fog and my sinuses obstruct."  
  
"Obstructed sinuses, eh?" the negro teased, glancing at the other's sizable schnazzola. "That could be serious. Maybe you better do the salad instead...."  
  
Peter watched the two disappear up the stairs, an amused half smile on his face at the repartee. Then he switched his attention to the man at his side, who was at this moment regarding him with large, wary eyes. "Think you can make it into my office?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
With Peter's assistance the relocation was soon accomplished, and soon the two were established on the battered sofa Peter kept around for what he liked to term emergency napping. From there one had an unobstructed view through the glass walls enclosing the office, albeit an inauspicious one of the rear of the garage. The two young men sat in uncomfortable silence for several seconds, then Ray cleared his throat.  
  
"Um ... Peter, if this is about the way I messed up the bust today...."  
  
Startled out of his own reverie, Venkman glanced up, waving one hand disparagingly. "Winston and Egon got the last gooper. No big deal."  
  
Stantz mulled that over, scratching his smooth chin. "You're mad at me for something else?"  
  
There was a dust ball on the floor beside Peter's foot; he kicked it under the sofa, a frown creasing his handsome features. "What makes you think I'm mad about something?"  
  
Ray rubbed absently at his stretched-out leg, carefully not looking at the older man. "You've been so short with everyone, it's kind of obvious you're mad about something. I-I wanted to help ... I mean, to ask.... Whatever it was, I didn't mean it. You know that don't you?"  
  
There was so much earnestness in the apology that Peter patted his leg though his expression remained unchanged. "I'm not mad, Ray. But after what happened this afternoon, I'm ..." He pursed his lips, choosing his words carefully. "... shall we say, concerned?"  
  
Ray twined his hands fingers together, a nervous habit whenever he was under stress. His eyes, however, were completely without guile. "I don't understand."  
  
Peter looked from Ray's clasped hands to his eyes and back to his hands. "You really don't know, do you? But you suspect. I can tell." When Ray didn't answer, Peter dropped his head into his palms, rubbing his face briskly. When he raised it again, the anger had returned, a tautness in his jaw that had ever bespoken imminent explosion. "Do I have to spell everything out?" he grunted, turning to face Stantz directly.  
  
Only Ray's lips moved in response. "I think you'd better."  
  
Green eyes narrowed, then Peter stood, his agitation finding expression in motion. "Why did you fall?"  
  
Ray blinked. "Why? I wasn't paying attention and I slipped, that's all."  
  
Venkman took a turn around the room then came to stand over the engineer, hands on hips. "That's not all and you know it. The reason you fell was me."  
  
Stantz protest was immediate. "That's not true, Peter! I slipped."  
  
Peter scowled. In an abrupt move he swooped down on the unsuspecting Stantz, lips parted and ugly silver temporary caps glinting in the artificial light. Brown eyes flying open, Ray uttered an alarmed cry and cringed backward until he was brought up short by the back of the couch, one hand coming up to protect his throat. Seeing this, Peter stopped, his reaching arms dropping to his sides. "That's what happened this afternoon," he rapped curtly. "That's why you fell."  
  
Ray sagged, his breathing coming faster than before. "You're nuts! You startled me...."  
  
"I startled you this afternoon," Peter snapped back. "And all I did was walk up behind you." He retreated a step, vision shifting from Ray's still- pale face to a picture hanging above his head. It showed old stone buildings, white with rimefrost. In the foreground three men stood, their arms locked around each other's shoulders, wide grins on their faces. "Did you think I wouldn't know you were afraid of me?"  
  
"That's not true!" But Ray's eyes betrayed the half-lie. He stopped, swallowed heavily, his normally soft voice growing even quieter. "Maybe ... maybe sometimes I remember ... some of what happened. But ... that doesn't mean I blame you, Peter. It wasn't your fault. What happened was all my idea, after all."  
  
Peter dropped back down onto the couch and absently smoothed a wrinkle in his gray sweat pants. "Don't apologize for saving my life, Ray. If not for you I would have killed someone else and no one would ever have been able to help me."  
  
Ray shifted uncomfortably under that faintly damning praise, shy self- deprecation in his face. "That was only according to Turkish legend but I didn't want to take a chance. I only gambled on a blood oath being binding, too. I didn't really know anything."  
  
"Gamble paid off." Venkman met brown-amber eyes, remorse further creasing the harsh planes around his mouth. "Nearly cost you your life. Twice."  
  
Color touched Ray's cheeks at that. "Like I said, I didn't even know if it would work. No big deal or anything." The seemingly simple statement elicited fresh irritation in Venkman; in a sudden burst, he slammed his fist into the side of the sofa, raising little puffs of dust from the old upholstery. Ray watched the display calmly, though his fingers continued to clamp tight. "Now are you going to tell me why you've been mad at me all week?"  
  
Peter waved away the dust cloud, then sneezed and reached for a kleenex in the pocket of his sweatpants. "I said I'm not mad -- at least, not at you."  
  
"Who, then?"  
  
"Who?" Peter blew his nose and tossed the tissue into a nearby wastecan. "Nobody. Everybody. Me, maybe."  
  
"You? Why would you be made at yourself? Not about ... what happened?"  
  
"What happened." Peter hunched his shoulders forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "You don't even say it out loud, do you. Do you mention the subject even to yourself?" Ray began some disjointed protest, which Peter cut off by raising a hand. "What happened," he said brutally, "was that I tore your throat out. And liked it."  
  
He turned glittering green eyes on the troubled brown, and Ray actually retreated several inches from the ferocity there before he could catch himself. "That wasn't you, Peter," he denied, touching the bandages on his neck in a self-conscious way. "It was them -- the Q'utah. They cut me, not you."  
  
"They were also me." Peter let the words hang in the still air, their echo growing until it was a solid wall between them. Ray stared back, troubled, then dropped his head, fixing the concrete floor with a steady look. Peter extinguished the blaze in his eyes, his tone muting slightly. "You think about it a lot."  
  
"Only sometimes," was the stubborn response. "Not a lot."  
  
"Sometimes is enough, I'd say." Again anger finished its cycle and died away, and the deep sadness in the psychologist's expression was no less affecting. He and Ray sat shoulder to shoulder for long minutes, neither looking at the other, the comfortable harmony that had always existed between them, for once missing. Finally, Peter roused himself from the spider's web of despair to invite, "Tell me how much you remember of that first night."  
  
"I don't remember much," Stantz answered fretfully, his fingers continuing their agitated dance. "Not really."  
  
Not good enough. "Tell me what you do remember."  
  
Still not looking up, Ray took a deep breath, his words emerging haltingly, painfully. "I was in the chem lab checking some references on vampires."  
  
"Is that what you were doing downstairs?" Peter said, surprised. "I wondered."  
  
"When we didn't find anything in the sewer ... and then you disappeared...." Ray glanced up at Peter and then away, wetting his lips with his tongue. "Tobin's didn't have anything; I hoped maybe Ryzczyk's Unspeakable Horrors would. Anyway, I heard someone moving around and found you under the stairs."  
  
"Thought you were a prowler," Peter explained sheepishly. "Was about to give you whatfor."  
  
"You needed blood ... or something," Ray finished shakily, not hearing the interruption, "and you took mine. That's it."  
  
There was a chill in the air completely unrelated to the room's temperature yet not disassociated from those terse, bleak statements. Venkman shivered under its impact, the heat of anger completely gone and leaving nothing but icy analysis. "That's not it, is it?" he said brutally. "You left out the best parts, like my fangs ripping open your throat, or how it felt to watch yourself bleed to death ... while I enjoyed it."  
  
"Stop it, Peter!" Ray blurted, spinning on his companion with all the force of a desperate man. "It was them! Them!"  
  
If it was his intention to make some dent in the other's weary composure, he was doomed to disappointment; Peter went on unheeding, his tone so reasonable as to be that much more disturbing. "It's in your mind all the time isn't it?" he prodded relentlessly, giving the engineer no respite, "Every time you look at me."  
  
Backed into a corner, Ray started to shake, a tiny shiver of suppressed stress only in his hands. "I can't help it. I try but...."  
  
"But you can't separate the two -- not here." Peter tapped his temple meaningfully. "That's why when you saw me behind you this afternoon, you pulled back. That's why you fell. That's why I'm ... quitting the team."  
  
Shock blanked the youthful features for a full thirty seconds. Ray's mouth hung open, his eyes wide. "You ... you don't mean that," he gasped finally, getting control of himself though his face had gone white. "You can't mean that! Peter...!"  
  
Venkman held up a hand. "The only reason, I repeat, the only reason any of us are alive right now is because we learned to trust each other totally, especially in a combat situation. Once we lose that, we're no longer a team. That means one of us is going to go uncovered -- or flinch away and fall, maybe to his death." The cool tones faltered and he looked away. "I'm not prepared to let that happen."  
  
"But you can't! It was my fault! Peter, I'm sorry! I didn't mean.... You...!" The words trailed off into incoherency, seemingly making no impression on the other's averted face. Finally Ray fell silent, both hands raised helplessly. "Please."  
  
Ray sounded so miserable that Peter was moved to look up. He hesitated, then slipped an arm around the drooping shoulders. "Don't look like that, kid. It's not like I'm running out on you. I just won't be going on busts anymore." His voice broke and he as obliged to stop and take a deep breath. He swallowed and went on, "I'll try and get an apartment nearby...."  
  
Ray hung his head, covering his face with one hand. "I'm so sorry, Peter. This all my stupid fault."  
  
The psychologist pulled him closer until Ray was leaning against him. There was a weary surrender in Peter's features -- the look of a man whose mind is made up little though he liked the verdict. It might have been mistaken for conviction if the devastation in his eyes had not belied the facade for the fraud it was. "Don't Ray! After what you went through, you have to expect a certain amount of trauma. You can't help feeling the effects." Ray didn't look up and Peter raised his free hand to thread his fingers in the fine auburn hair, sighing deeply at the contact. "It'll go away Ray. Just give it some time."  
  
Ray uncovered his eyes and peeked up, freeing his hair without leaving the circle of the older man's arm. "Doesn't that apply to you, too? You went through more than I did. And you've been so...."  
  
"So what?" Peter asked with distant curiosity.  
  
"Unapproachable. Mad and distant and.... Egon said if we gave you some space you'd work it out and be all right again. I ... guess he was wrong." He twisted until he could grasp Peter's left hand with both of his own. "Can't you see? The Q'utah messed with your head, not mine. You're the one not thinking straight -- you can't be if you think leaving is going to help!"  
  
"I'm not the one who fell," Peter reminded him curtly, his tone uncharacteristically defensive.  
  
Ray accepted that with relative aplomb. "What do you remember, Peter?"  
  
Venkman spent several full minutes examining the glass office partition, that far away look returning. "For two and a half days I was dirty and hungry and scared out of my mind. I wasn't sure if you were dead ... or worse. I ... can't remember ever being that miserable." He shuddered and Ray leaned closer, slipping his arm under Peter's and around the older man's back. Peter securing his own grip on Ray's shoulders, seeming to draw strength from his friend's touch. They sat like that silently for a long time, Ray rubbing his back, Peter resting his cheek on soft hair. Ever so slowly the contact had its effect; the agonized expression faded leaving him looking spent yet with a tenderness softening the rough edges that had not been there before. Finally, he straightened, hesitantly meeting Ray's openly compassionate gaze. "The whole experience wasn't horrible. Part of it I ... cherish."  
  
"When was that?" Ray asked encouragingly, not loosing his hold one iota.  
  
Fine lips quirked in a smile. "While we were in contact ... I was inside of your head -- emotions, memories, experiences -- everything. For awhile I actually was you ... sort of."  
  
Ray stirred, pulling back just far enough to see Peter clearly. "I thought I felt something touch my mind but I couldn't really tell. It was so vague you couldn't have been broadcasting." He frowned, looking uncomfortable. "You know everything about me?"  
  
Peter didn't answer at first. He regarded the youthful face consideringly. "I always wondered what your mother looked like. Those old black-and- white photos you have are faded. She was lovely -- so young and full of life. You resemble her quite a bit."  
  
Ray dropped his eyes, a very old pain stirring their liquid amber depths. "Everyone said she was beautiful. Most of the time. Bad things made her so sad, though. That was ... a lot of the time near the-the end."  
  
Peter smiled reminiscently. "Very beautiful. Curly red hair and dark brown eyes. I didn't expect her to be that fragile." He waved a hand humorously. "Hey, if she wasn't married, I'd've taken a crack at her!"  
  
"I miss her a lot."  
  
The tones were so choked that Peter turned to look at him sharply. "I know you do, kiddo; I did too when I was you. Saw Pa Hanley, that low-life scumbag. If I could have...."  
  
"He's not important," Ray interrupted quickly with a flash of alarm.  
  
"And," Peter finished mercilessly but with a touch of the whimsical, "Lorna."  
  
Ray blinked. "Lorna? My cow Lorna? You know about her?"  
  
Peter shrugged, mischief dancing in bright green eyes. "A bit. Big thing -- at least, she looked big when you're seeing through the eyes of a ten year old. Moo-moo face, wet, scratchy tongue."  
  
A slow smile smoothed lines of concern. "I used to really love Lorna. They let me raise her myself after her mother rejected her. She was one of my best friends on the Hanley place." He grinned, a brief, embarrassed flash of white teeth. "Kind of weird keeping a cow for a pet on a working farm."  
  
"Working farm?" Peter delicately cleared his throat. "You ... um ... didn't eat her or anything, did you?"  
  
Ray looked scandalized at that, then somewhat sad. "Mr. Hanley wanted to slaughter Lorna when she was a couple years old. We ran away. They caught me and brought me back but by then one on the neighboring farmers, Mr. Olsen, had agreed to take Lorna as a milk cow. He promised me he'd wouldn't kill her and Pa Hanley never found out what happened." He bit his lip, defiance jutting out his jaw. "He was mad for a long time but I never told him where she was. Never."  
  
"Couldn't have been easy to keep quiet,," Peter murmured, uncertain temper smoldering. "I felt that strap of his, that lousy--"  
  
"I don't want to talk about him," Ray pleaded quietly, eyes hooded. "Or Mom or.... I ... guess you know all about them anyway."  
  
Peter laughed shortly. "Hardly everything. All I remember are a few flashes. Does that make you uncomfortable with me?"  
  
"Should it?" Ray rejoined in tones Peter himself might have used.  
  
Peter laughed again, this time with genuine amusement. "You've been hanging around me too long. Since you never talk about your past, I just assume it's something you don't want me to know. If not, my finding out what you're keeping to yourself is bound to make you uncomfortable with me." He waved a hand expansively. "Quod Erat Demonstrandum."  
  
Ray pondered that a moment, resting his chin in his palm. "It's not that I don't want you to know anything about me," he said slowly, carefully not looking in Peter's direction. "It's just ... I don't want to think about ... that time. I want to live in this time." He looked up. "Is that so bad? To want to live only for now?"  
  
Peter tightened his hold around Ray's shoulders, leaning forward himself until he was inches from the questioning brown eyes. "The past shapes the present," he explained gently. "The only way to stop it from affecting you -- or hurting you -- is to bring it into the light and deal with it for what it is or was. Running away from it won't eliminate the problem."  
  
Ray's bright eyes lightened. "The Q'utah ... everything that happened -- that was in the past too. It can't hurt us now if you don't run away from it. We have to deal with it together, right?"  
  
Sensing the unaccustomed precipice of threatened defeat crumbling beneath him, Peter pulled back, clasping his hands behind his head and affecting a pseudo-casual pose. "Argument won't wash, bunky. That ..." He jerked a thumb at Ray's bandaged ankle, then reclasped it behind his head. "... happened today, not last week, and dealing with it means preventing it from happening again. That's the whole point of this discussion."  
  
Ray stared at him helplessly, fresh pain in his eyes mixed with an older, resurfacing emotion that Peter had acknowledged hating for years. Peter, seeing this, sat up straighter and took him by the shoulders. "Don't even think it," he ordered firmly, giving the younger man a shake. "My leaving has nothing to do with blame and it's not your fault. It's just ..." He waved one hand, his rational tone breaking under the strain of maintaining an insincere facade. "... the result of circumstances."  
  
"You sound like Egon," Ray returned in a choked voice. "But it's not right. You can't...."  
  
"Peter!" That strident, slightly nasal bass jerked both their heads up. Filling the entire doorway stood a tall, blue-clad physicist with red glasses, blond hair and an very forbidding expression. "You and I have something to discuss, I believe," he rumbled, stalking forward  
  
"He's going to quit the team!" Ray wailed, regarding Egon beseechingly. "You've got to do something!"  
  
"You told," Peter accused the black man following in Spengler's wake.  
  
Zeddemore shrugged. "Not into abetting some idiot's self-demolition," he returned unapologetically. He leaned one hip against Peter's heavy wooden desk, his boot clunking against its side. "Did you think it was going to be easy to walk out on us? If so, you're doin' really bad drugs, homeboy."  
  
Peter sighed deeply, the hunted look that he'd worn for several days returning with a vengeance. He released Ray and stood to face the advancing blond squarely, his body tensed as though for combat. "I think you should hear my side," he began reasonably.  
  
Egon dismissed that with an impatient gesture. "I don't need to hear your side if it includes your leaving the team." He placed his fists on his hips belligerently, regarding Venkman from a distance of less than a foot. Egon's blue eyes held a curious mixture of severity and a sympathy even his thick lenses could not hide. "It was obviously a miscalculation to leave you unattended for any length of time. Your logic circuits disengaged."  
  
Peter smiled bleakly. "My logic circuits are working all too well," he returned. "That's the problem."  
  
"You logic circuits haven't been in working order for days," the blond snapped back, full lips thinned with annoyance. "What possible justification could your warped mind have come up with for walking out on the team?"  
  
Had he been physically slapped, Peter could not have flinched as visibly at those words. He unsuccessfully attempted to cover the reaction by crossing his arms across his chest, for once unable to create a casual veneer. "It's not a matter of walking out," he protested. "This is necessary." Unable to turn away from Egon's rivetting stare, his green eyes dulled, shadowed from within. "If I stay I could be danger to you all. Ask Ray. He knows how ... pleasurable it was for me while I was feeding. And there's a constant echo in the back of my head reminding me of how great it was to feel ... sated." He did escape the sharp field of blue then, dipping his head to sink into Ray's gentle brown eyes. "The Q'utah might be gone but how can we be sure their influence is? That hunger was overwhelming; what if it comes back? What if I revert to what I was?"  
  
"Do you feel any continuing influence?" Egon asked worriedly. "You're readings have remained normal since we trapped the Q'utah."  
  
That brought Peter around in a flash. "Ah-HA! So you have been keeping watch on me. Your suspicions were aroused too, eh?"  
  
Egon shook his head definitely. "Not at all, Peter. I consider it standard procedure to test and retest any data which comes into my possession. The phenomenon of your enslavement was unique and I was curious as to any long term effects on your own psi-readings." He looked uncomfortable. "I ... must admit I was a little uneasy as well. Your behavior has been erratic of late and...."  
  
"Just like I told ya, Pete," Winston interjected when the blond stumbled to a confused halt. "None of us knew how to approach you and it worried us. You know Egon -- scientific road first."  
  
"He's right." That was Ray, his soft voice hesitant as though expecting a rebuff. "You wouldn't tell us what was wrong and...."  
  
Peter returned his stare to the younger man, baring his teeth fractionally to reveal the silver caps. "And what does that have to do with whether or not I'm going to revert to type?" he interrupted without apology. "If my natural psionics have been affected by the alien contact, we could all be up the creek. Especially you." He turned, switching his glare to Spengler. "And don't try to tell me it can't happen, Egon. This is my field, remember, and I know it's a possibility."  
  
"Nothing is impossible," the physicist agreed. "However, statistically the probability line hovers in the one-percent range. And that, my friend, is my field."  
  
Peter stared. "You worked it out?"  
  
Egon stared back. "Did you think I wouldn't?"  
  
Peter waved a hand. "Sorry. Forgot who I was talking. Of course you worked it out." He paused, letting the blond's words sink in. "One percent, eh? That low?"  
  
"Based on the quantitative table you and Professor Stubbs worked out two years ago," Egon returned easily, "and the readings I've been taking, one percent is actually a generous estimate." The blond head shook head with honest bafflement. "You cannot believe your presence constitutes a genuine danger to Ray, Winston or myself? After all we've been through together -- after all we've faced together -- can you honestly look into your heart and say that?"  
  
Peter shook his head stubbornly. "My heart? Not the logical approach I was expecting from you, Spengs. But to answer your question, forget my heart -- I can look into that bruise on Ray's face and say that."  
  
"But Peter...." Ray began desperately, fingering the small bandage on his forehead.  
  
Egon cut him off by spinning on him. "Raymond, when you were attacked by those terror dogs last year, who was it that drove them off?"  
  
"Peter did," Stantz returned promptly.  
  
"And whose plan was it that forced the nether-entity Plague to release you from her sickness?"  
  
"Peter!" Ray answered again with even more force, eyes fixed on Venkman's. The psychologist, however, seemed fascinated by the intense sapphire stare again boring into him from behind Egon's red frames.  
  
"It was Peter who dug me out when that wall collapsed last month," Winston chimed in, reading Egon's tactics accurately. "He saved my life that day."  
  
"And who came after me when my body was being used by that N-E?" Egon finished in the triumphant tones of one who has just won a major battle. "Dr. Venkman, would you care to assess the probable consequences to Ray, Winston or myself had you been absent on any one of those occasions?"  
  
Winston tapped the desk, waiting until he had Peter's reluctant attention. "Or a hundred other occasions." He leaned forward, reaching across to slap Peter hard on the chest. "You're part of this team, homeboy. Without you we'd've been dead a long time ago."  
  
"Not trusting me can accomplish the same thing," Peter commented pointedly and to no one in particular. He dropped back onto the sofa abruptly, as though his legs could no longer hold him, then turned to pierce Ray with a glance. "It nearly did today. You could have broken your neck."  
  
"Shoot. Seein' your ugly mug would have made me jump, too," Winston broke in, making a weak attempt at humor.  
  
"But I didn't break my neck." Ray snagged Peter's sleeve, his expression was earnest and pleading. "Nothing happened to me today worse than a bump on the head and a sprained ankle. We've all gotten worse than that playing touch football! Nothing happened except ... what you're doing right now." He choked off, dropping his eyes. When he resumed, there was more pleading in his voice and his fingers twisted gray cotton. "Maybe I ... do have some problems with what happened with the Q'utah. Sometimes when I'm asleep...." He stopped, visibly forcing his head back up. "You say I'll get over what happened in time but you're not even willing to give me that time."  
  
"You're even less willing to give yourself that time," Zeddemore interjected. "You had it worse than Ray. Who are you, Superman?"  
  
Ray went on as though the black man had not spoken. "Peter, it's only been a couple of days since what happened ... since the Q'utah made you attack me." He released Peter's sleeve to take his hand, holding it tight with both his own. "You were the one that mentioned traumatic effects and that we'd have to do some healing."  
  
Egon knelt by the couch, resting one large hand on the enclasped ones of Peter and Ray. "You, Raymond and myself have been together better than ten years! Don't we deserve a little time to heal before you decide to throw it all away? Before you throw us away?"  
  
His kindly tone caused Peter's face to crumble, the defensive determination fading into open need. "It could cost your life, Egon. It nearly cost Ray's. How can I...?"  
  
Stantz managed to wave that away without releasing Peter's hand. "You could never hurt me, Peter, not deliberately and not because of them. I know that -- I always did. Even when the Q'utah had you, I knew you wouldn't kill me."  
  
"We all knew that," Winston interjected quietly. "No matter what the Q'utah had done to you, inside you were still a man -- a man we all loved."  
  
"And trusted," Spengler added, his deep bass a caress.  
  
"I wish I could believe that." And this much was truth for this was the core of Peter's ache. "The Q'utah augmented a psionically empathic state, especially while they were ... while we were feeding. I could tap into Ray's emotions as if they were my own." He licked dry lips, avoiding his comrades' eyes by gazing steadily out the open glass door. "I remember when the flavor changed. It wasn't sweet trust I was tasting -- it was fear."  
  
Ray released Peter with one hand to touch his own throat, paling again at the returned memory. "I was afraid," he confessed softly, as to himself. "I was scared to death. I could feel myself...."  
  
"Dying."  
  
Ray shivered. "Yeah. But, Peter, I was scared of what was happening; I was never scared of you." He tugged on Peter's arm though the psychologist refused to look his way. "After I woke up I was even more scared -- not of you but for you! We didn't know what had happened to you or even if you were still alive. Or if we could save you or...."  
  
Shifting slightly, Peter wove his fingers through Ray's, reaching for Egon's hand through them. "How could you not have been afraid of me?" he asked in a quavering voice. "It's normal to be afraid, and it was me that was doing it all to you." His jaw jutted forward, teeth clenched tight. "I remember how much trust there was in you even when I was ripping your throat open. I remember what it tasted like when you were afraid. I know what you felt."  
  
Ray shook their clenched hands roughly, his face a study in denial. "But not who it was directed at. Never at you, Peter. At the Q'utah, but not you. Not ever." He stopped, squeezing Peter's hand for all he was worth. "Don't leave us, Peter. Please."  
  
Egon slid onto the couch then slipped his arm around Peter's shoulders, holding onto him even as Ray was, the psychologist being bracketed between them. "You care enough about our well-being to force yourself to leave us," Egon murmured close to his ear. "Care enough to stay."  
  
"You've got to know we need you, homeboy," Winston added for good measure. He stepped across Ray's injured leg and sat on the engineer's far side, twisting until he could look into dulled green eyes. "Take it from someone who's been where you are. Everyone who ever fought in Viet Nam knows what it's like to be used as a pawn; the trick is to not let it stop you. Keep going or the user wins in the end."  
  
"I've never seen Dr. Peter Venkman give up on anything." Egon tightened his hold. "I refuse to believe I shall see that now."  
  
"Please, Peter," Ray breathed, fixing the mute psychologist with so imploring a look that Peter swallowed heavily. "Stay."  
  
Emerald eyes locked with amber, his own voice hoarse, his expression tender. "I don't want anything to happen to you. Anything else," he amended, glancing at the ugly white bandages on Ray's throat. "But...." He turned to the others, first Winston, who was unconsciously holding his breath, then Egon, whose strong features were taut with apprehension. "Maybe we do need some time...."  
  
"Time heals," Ray prodded softly. "Isn't that what you're always telling us?"  
  
Peter considered this carefully, lips pursed. Slowly, he nodded, taut muscles sagging. "Okay. You win. I guess we're worth some healing time after all." This statement was met with cheers and hugs from all sides. Peter grinned. "You know, it's bad enough fighting the three of you guys; it's dirty pool making me fight me too."  
  
"Guess you were always meant to be on our side, homeboy," Winston said, ruffling Peter's hair fondly. "Even against yourself."  
  
Peter reflected, absently finger combing his thick brown locks back into place. "We all do need some time -- away from the pressures to ..."  
  
"Heal?" Egon suggested.  
  
"... relax," Peter finished firmly. "We're all too tense. I know I'm not up to doing any busts for awhile."  
  
"Got your solution," Winston said. "How about a vacation?"  
  
The couch groaned as Ray moved, practically jumping up and down in sudden excitement. "A vacation! Great idea! We could go back to Tahiti...."  
  
"Not enough money," Peter vetoed practically.  
  
"Florida?" Egon suggested, pulling off his glasses and polishing them on his sleeve.  
  
"Flying cockroaches," the psychologist returned with a theatrical shudder. "Hated it last time I was there."  
  
"Cousin Sam's?" Ray suggested timidly. This was greeted by a chorus of groans. He visibly wilted. "Or someplace else."  
  
"Definitely someplace else, Tex." To remove any possible sting from the rejection, Peter hesitantly draped his arm over Ray's and around the younger man's neck in easy affection. Rather than pulling away, Ray leaned against him with a grin and Peter heaved a near inaudible sigh of pure contentment. He slumped back against Egon's chest, his casual pose no longer pretense, his own grin even wider than Ray's. "I vote for a week at Asbury Park. It's close, we're off-season, and we might catch the Boss at the Stone Pony if our timing's right. What'd'ya say?"  
  
Nodding slowly, Zeddemore again reached across Ray to pat Peter on the head, much to Peter's expressed annoyance. "I say Springstein is on tour, but Asbury Park sounds good to me."  
  
"I don't care where we go." Ray's entire face glowed, his eyes reflecting the fluorescent lights like twin stars. "As long as you're not going to leave us."  
  
"As if we'd permit that," Egon added, poking Peter in the ribs playfully. "The odds of your actually succeeding in such an endeavor are excruciatingly minuscule."  
  
Peter looked at each of his three friends -- the affection-softened angles of Egon's face, the sheer adoration in Ray's amber eyes, the brotherly affection in Winston's open smile -- and his own expression regained what the Q'utah had taken -- the tranquility of a man who knows he is loved. "When you're right, you're right, Spengs-baby ... whatever you said."  
  
"In your own vernacular," Egon translated, giving Peter another poke then having to cover his ribs when the psychologist retaliated with a vengeance, "the translation is...."  
  
"I know." Peter grinned. "Cowabunga! The Four Amigos ride again!"  
  
**** 


End file.
